So You Want to Make Junk Journals
Most people ask me Junk Journal Questions because they found a Pinterest board full of beautiful books and assumed it would be easy. It's not. The process takes longer than you think, and about half the time I spend on a journal is just dealing with paper that won't stay flat or adhesive that ruins the look after a few days. Here's how it actually works. You don't buy a kit. You gather. That's the first thing most tutorials get wrong. They'll tell you to order a junk journal starter pack from Etsy for forty bucks. Just collect stuff instead. Mail flyers, magazine clippings, vintage postcards from thrift stores, tea towels with patterns you like. I usually set aside Saturday mornings for a few months and just fill a cardboard box with paper materials. By the time I start assembling, I already have enough content for maybe three journals without spending another dime on supplies. The binding method matters more than anything else. You've got a few options and each has real trade-offs. Stitched pamphlet binding with Kitchener stitch or just simple stab binding costs about ten minutes per signature and holds up for years. glue bindings are faster but they crack after three or four uses. I stopped using glue at the spine around 2018 after watching a journal I'd spent six hours on fall apart in a drawer. Since then I stitch everything. It takes longer upfront but the book stays open flat, which is the whole point of making these things writable.
The Stuff Nobody Warns You About
Paper weight is the first hidden problem. Most junk journal people use whatever odds and ends they find, which means you're working with anything from printer paper to construction paper to manila envelopes. The problem is that different papers absorb moisture differently. When you collage pages, some layers will curl within hours while others sit flat. I learned this the hard way with a batch of handmade deckle-edged paper I bought from a local artist. The collage looked gorgeous for two days, then every page in the project buckled into a concave bowl shape because that paper was way too heavy for the adhesive I used. The workaround is simple and costs nothing: condition your paper before you start. Lay everything flat under a stack of heavy books for at least forty-eight hours. It sounds boring but it eliminates about sixty percent of the curling issues people complain about. I also learned to test adhesives on scraps first. Washi tape is fine for light ephemera. Gouache or matte medium works better for heavier items. Hot glue destroys the aesthetic and leaves visible strings. Don't use it unless you're attaching something structural like a pocket made from cardstock. There's a common misconception that junk journals are supposed to look messy and random. They're not. The best ones I've ever seen are the ones where someone actually planned the color palette before opening a single envelope. I keep a small pile of reference images on my phone showing color combinations I like. When I'm pulling together a journal, I look at those first and skip anything that doesn't fit. The result is tighter and more intentional without looking sterile.
Junk Journal Questions That Come Up Constantly
Here are the actual questions I see repeated on forums, and what I wish more people understood about them. Should you leave pages blank? Yes. I used to obsessively fill every available inch and ended up with journals that were too thick to close properly. Leave a quarter of the pages empty for photos, receipts, or notes you can add later. That's what makes it a journal instead of just an art book. How do you prevent ink bleed-through? This is where paper weight again becomes the main factor. Any paper under 90 gsm is going to show ghost images from gel pens or markers. I switched to fountain pens with quick-drying ink or pencil for writing directly on collage pages. If you must use gel pens, put a blank sheet behind the page you're writing on. Takes two seconds and saves ruined pages.
Get the Full Details
What about the journal's cover? Most beginners reach for craft foam board or binder board. Both work fine. I prefer upcycled cereal boxes or thick cardstock from old packaging because they're free and surprisingly durable when you cover them with fabric or heavy paper. The finish matters more than the material underneath. A badly covered cover makes a good journal look cheap. A clean edge with wrapped fabric or decoupage makes recycled materials look deliberate.
Advanced Detail That Makes a Real Difference
Most people skip the endpapers. These are the first and last pages that touch the cover, and they're the first thing someone sees when they open the book. Using something slightly more substantial here than your collage pages gives the journal a finished feel. A piece of vintage bookcloth or even a well-matched scrap of fabric works. Glue it down with matte medium and weight it until dry. Two minutes of extra work and the journal feels like an object instead of a craft project. Another thing beginners overlook is the difference between visual rhythm and actual balance. A journal with alternating textures and colors looks more interesting than one where every page is a flat collage. Put a solid color page after a busy one. A textured envelope spread after a printed ephemera page. The eye needs somewhere to rest. Without that breathing room, everything starts to blur together and the reader loses interest after a few spreads. If you want to add pockets, don't buy pre-made ones. Make them from vintage envelopes or small folded pieces of paper. The trick is the fold: fold the bottom up about half an inch, glue that flap to the journal page, then fold the sides inward and glue those down. A single envelope makes a pocket that holds about eight standard index cards. It takes forty seconds each. I make five or six per journal and tuck them between spreads.
When Junk Journaling Isn't Worth It
I need to be honest about where this hobby breaks down. If you're expecting to produce a finished journal in under two hours, you're going to be frustrated. A typical medium-sized junk journal with stitched binding, a custom cover, and about forty pages of varied content takes me roughly four to six hours from start to finish, including drying time between layers. That's after years of doing this. If you're new, plan for eight to ten hours minimum. Also, the material costs add up faster than people expect if you're buying specialty papers, quality inks, and binding thread. The whole point of junk journaling is using recycled materials. Once you start purchasing curated ephemera packs from specialty shops, you're paying $30 to $60 for supplies and the result is no different from what you could make for free. I've watched people spend more on a starter supply bundle than a complete blank leather-bound journal costs at a bookstore, and the finished product is objectively worse. The biggest bottleneck is drying time. If you're working in a humid environment or a cold apartment without good airflow, you're looking at three to five days of drying time between major steps. I keep a small desk fan running near my work surface and it cuts that down to about a day and a half. Not a luxury, it's a practical necessity if you want to finish a journal in a reasonable timeframe.
There's no downloadable template or kit that I know of for this. Everything is built from scratch using whatever materials you source. The learning curve is steep but shallow once you pass it. After about five journals you'll know exactly which adhesives work with which papers and you'll stop second-guessing yourself on composition. That's when it stops being labor and starts being something you actually enjoy doing.
