Junk Journaling Is Back – Here’s What to Put in Your First One

Somewhere between the burnout of digital minimalism and the itch to make something tangible with your hands, junk journaling crawled out of scrapbooking’s shadow and became the craft everyone’s suddenly obsessed with again. Old bus tickets, faded receipts, torn wallpaper samples, dried flowers pressed between paper towels. These forgotten scraps that used to go straight into the trash are now the raw material for one of the most personal, low-pressure creative outlets you can start this weekend. If you’ve been eyeing those aesthetic junk journal videos online and wondering where to even begin, you’re in the right place.

Junk journaling doesn’t require fancy supplies, artistic talent, or a clear plan. It just requires stuff, the kind you already have lying around your house right now. Let’s talk about exactly what goes into that first page.

What Junk Journaling Actually Is (And Why It’s Having a Moment)

A junk journal is essentially a handmade book built from repurposed materials, filled with a mix of ephemera, writing, and visual textures rather than polished layouts. Unlike traditional scrapbooking, which tends to be photo-focused and event-driven, junk journaling is looser. It’s about capturing a feeling, a season, a random Tuesday, using whatever paper scraps happen to be sitting in a drawer.

The revival makes sense when you think about what people are craving right now: something slow, tactile, and screen-free. After years of digital everything, there’s real comfort in cutting paper with scissors, smelling old book pages, and gluing things down without an undo button. It’s messy in the best way, more about the process than the finished product.

If you already enjoy hands-on projects, this hobby pairs naturally with other quick crafts for stress relief you might already be doing on quiet evenings. It scratches the same itch: something to do with restless hands that isn’t scrolling.

Start With What’s Already in Your Recycling Bin

The beauty of junk journaling is that your first supply run should start at home, not at the craft store. Before you buy a single thing, dig through what you’d normally toss out.

• Old greeting cards, especially ones with pretty patterns or handwritten notes
• Receipts, ticket stubs, and boarding passes
• Torn pieces of wrapping paper or wallpaper samples
• Envelopes with interesting postage stamps or postmarks
• Pages from old books, calendars, or damaged magazines
• Fabric scraps, ribbon, or lace from other projects
• Pressed flowers or leaves
• Sheet music, maps, or vintage-looking paper of any kind

This is also a great excuse to finally sort through that pile of “maybe I’ll use this someday” material. If you’ve been holding onto fabric or paper remnants from other projects, this hobby gives them a real purpose. There’s genuine overlap here with upcycling magic that turns trash into treasure, since the core skill is the same: seeing potential in things other people throw away.

The Core Elements Every First Journal Needs

A Base to Build On

You don’t need a fancy journal to start. Many people repurpose an old notebook, a hardcover book with the pages glued together, or even a stack of folded paper bags stitched down the spine. The base just needs to hold weight, since junk journals get thick fast once you start layering material.

Pockets and Envelopes

Pockets are the heart of a junk journal. They let you tuck away small items, notes, or photos without gluing them permanently in place. An easy trick: fold an envelope in half, glue the edges to a page, and instantly you’ve got a hidden storage spot. Old envelopes with windows are especially popular because you can see a peek of what’s inside.

Texture Layers

This is what separates junk journaling from a plain scrapbook. Layering different textures, like burlap, lace, tissue paper, or torn cardstock, gives each page depth. Don’t overthink the arrangement. Overlapping edges and slightly crooked placement is part of the charm.

Handwritten Bits

Quotes, single words, dates, or a few lines about your day add a personal thread through all the visual clutter. You don’t need to write full journal entries if that feels intimidating. Even a single word scrawled across a torn page carries weight.

Simple First Pages to Try

If you’re staring at a blank cover with zero idea where to start, these beginner-friendly page ideas make the process less overwhelming.

1. A “current favorites” page. Glue in a tea bag wrapper, a receipt from your favorite coffee shop, and a scrap of fabric in your current favorite color.
2. A weather page. Track the season with pressed leaves, a paint swatch that matches the sky, or a torn piece of an old calendar showing the month.
3. A pocket page. Make one big envelope pocket and fill it with tiny notes, ticket stubs, or photo strips you can pull out and look at later.
4. A texture test page. No theme required. Just glue down every interesting material you found that week and see how it looks together.

None of these need to be perfect. In fact, the slightly uneven, imperfect pages are usually the ones people end up loving most when they flip back through months later.

Tools That Actually Help (Without Overspending)

You can absolutely start with scissors, a glue stick, and tape you already own. But a few inexpensive tools make the process smoother if you decide to stick with it:

• A bone folder or the back of a spoon for crisp folds
• Washi tape for quick, no-mess embellishments
• A small hole punch for adding tags or ribbon ties
• Double-sided tape for delicate paper that glue might wrinkle
• A basic set of stamps or a stamp pad for adding dates or small designs

If organizing your growing pile of scraps starts to feel chaotic, borrowing a few ideas from craft room organization hacks can keep your workspace from spiraling into confetti. A few labeled boxes or jars sorted by paper type or color go a long way.

Making It a Habit, Not a Project

The mistake a lot of beginners make is treating their first junk journal like a big project that needs to be finished. It doesn’t. The best junk journals grow slowly, one page added whenever you feel like it, sometimes weeks apart.

Keep a small “collection” envelope somewhere accessible, like your bag or a kitchen drawer, so you can toss in interesting scraps as you come across them during the week. Then set aside fifteen quiet minutes every so often to sit down and actually glue things in. This turns it into one of those relaxing craft ideas for quiet evenings rather than another task on your to-do list.

If you have kids at home, this is also an easy activity to fold them into. Letting them dig through the scrap pile and choose their own pieces makes it feel less like a “craft project” and more like a treasure hunt, which pairs well with other crafting ideas for rainy days when everyone’s stuck inside.

Why This Trend Isn’t Going Anywhere Soon

Junk journaling taps into something people have been quietly craving: permission to keep the messy, unpolished parts of everyday life instead of curating them into oblivion. A crumpled receipt from a good day out matters more when it’s stuck inside a journal than when it’s sitting in a junk drawer, forgotten.

Your first journal doesn’t need a theme, a color scheme, or an audience. It just needs a starting page and a willingness to glue something down imperfectly. Grab that pile of scraps you’ve been meaning to toss, pick one small idea from this list, and start there. The rest will fill itself in one messy, satisfying page at a time.