How To Junk Journal Spreads

Spreads Are Just Paper Stacked on Paper Until You Decide What Stays

A junk journal spread is a two-page layout built from found papers, ephemera, and other scrap materials. The mechanics are straightforward: you adhere flat items to cardstock pages, build texture through layering, and arrange visual weight so neither page feels abandoned. What makes spreads interesting is not the concept itself, it is the execution. Here is the process as I do it. I start by sorting loose ephemera into three piles: structural pieces that anchor the layout, textural fills that add surface interest, and disposable scraps I might use for under-layering. Then I lay everything out on a flat surface without glue. I flip through the pages I have already finished. Most of my spreads fall into one of three patterns: a central focal piece on one page with supporting elements bleeding across the gutter, a symmetrical layout with matched elements on each side, or a deliberately uneven composition where one page carries almost all the visual weight while the other stays sparse. Adhesive choice matters more than most people admit. Wet media like matte medium or acid-free glue sticks will warp thin paper immediately if you use too much. I use a thin PVA applied with a palette knife rather than a brush, and I work in sections. For heavier items like ticket stubs or stiff card fragments, I apply adhesive to the item itself, not the page, which gives me a few extra seconds to reposition before it sticks. For truly delicate paper that curls at the edges, I use a glue pen. It lays down a precise line and dries flat.

The trick beginners miss is that you should almost always under-layer before your main element. A piece of lined notebook paper or a fragment of a vintage envelope placed underneath your focal ticket or print accomplishes two things. It hides the raw edge of your page and adds a second visible layer of texture. It also prevents the focal item from looking like it was glued directly to plain cardstock, which reads as unfinished no matter how good the individual piece is. Another thing I do early and regret skipping sometimes is establishing a value map before gluing anything down. I hold my pile of scraps up to a light and separate them into dark, mid-tone, and light groups. Then I distribute those values across the two pages so one page doesn't become a black hole of dark paper and the other turns into a wash of pale fragments. This alone prevented me from making about five lopsided spreads last year before I caught the imbalance. I also seal the completed spread once I am satisfied with the arrangement. I run a thin coat of matte medium over the entire surface, which consolidates loose edges, prevents items from lifting in the spine area, and protects the pages from handling wear. The downside is that matte medium slightly darkens paper and can mute fine details on printed ephemera, so I test a small corner first. Gloss medium preserves detail better but attracts dust during the drying process, which is annoying if you work in an open space.

One specific problem I ran into recently involved using wax paper fragments from vintage tea packaging. The wax coating repelled standard PVA completely, so the pieces lifted within a day. I switched to a cold-melt glue gun on low setting, applying small dots directly to the wax surface. It holds reliably, but the raised glue lines are visible from the reverse side, which means I had to reinforce the backing page with a full sheet of archival cardstock to hide the glue marks.

What I Learned From Ruining Several Journals Before Getting This Right

The biggest mistake I see people make is over-decorating. A spread does not need to be fully covered. Empty space is functional, not lazy. It gives the eye a place to rest and makes the actual journal contents easier to write in later. I used to fill every inch because I thought density equaled effort, and I ended up with spreads that were physically too thick to close properly. The spine would bulge, the binding would strain, and pages would refuse to lie flat. That stopped happening once I started leaving at least one quadrant of each page relatively bare. Using heavy embellishments like buttons, ribbons, or thick fabric on a spread also causes binding problems in any journal that is not perfect-bound or post-bound. A standard stitched or glue-bound journal simply cannot accommodate bulk beyond about three millimeters per page without the spine cracking. If you plan to add dimensional items, you need to account for that thickness when selecting your base paper and when planning how many layers you will stack on top of each other. A single layer of cardstock plus two layers of ephemera usually stays under that threshold. Anything beyond that requires a post-bound or ring-bound format. Another issue is paper acid content. I learned this the hard way after leaving unfinished spreads in a drawer for six months. The cheap printer paper I used as under-layers yellowed noticeably and left slight color transfer marks on adjacent pages. Switching to acid-free archival paper for all structural layers eliminated that problem entirely, though it does increase material cost. For projects I know I will keep long-term, the extra cost is worth avoiding the discoloration issue.

If you are just starting out and want a complete set of pre-designed layouts to practice with, I have compiled a set of twelve spreads covering balanced compositions, asymmetrical layouts, texture-heavy pages, and minimal layouts. They are available as a PDF download here: [Download Junk Journal Spread Templates]. The templates include suggested material lists and approximate adhesive points for each layer, which cuts down the trial-and-error time significantly. I usually get a spread done in about twenty to thirty minutes once I have the materials sorted, compared to an hour or more when I am working blind.

The Parts Nobody Talks About

Lightweight paper like tissue or onion skin looks beautiful when isolated, but it tears easily during handling and does not hold adhesive well unless you back it with something sturdier first. If you want to use it, layer it over a slightly heavier piece of paper and adhere the combined unit rather than trying to glue tissue directly to your page. This also prevents the show-through problem where underlying pages become legible through thin sheets. Watercolor paper absorbs moisture differently than cardstock. If you add wet media to a spread that includes both surfaces, the watercolor paper will buckle slightly and create an uneven plane. I sometimes account for this by sanding down the raised edges after the medium dries, but that is destructive and wastes material. A cleaner approach is to skip wet media entirely and use dry pigments like chalk pastels on the surface, which add color without introducing moisture and therefore prevent the buckling issue altogether. Junk journal spreads work best when you plan for the journal to exist as a usable object, not just a display piece. If you add pockets, envelopes, or fold-out elements, you need to consider how those additions affect page turning and storage. Flat pockets work reliably. Three-dimensional pockets cause pages to catch against each other and slow down the journaling process. I make a habit of testing every added element by flipping through the pages repeatedly before I consider a spread finished.

The method described here does not work if your goal is purely decorative display pages meant to stay static and untouched. The recommendations assume you are building a journal you will actually use over months or years. If you are creating temporary art pieces instead, the constraints around bulk, binding thickness, and archival paper become irrelevant and you can pursue whatever approach fits your purpose.