Keep memories close with a vintage junk journal

When I was in middle school, one of my hobbies was creating murals. I’d get some poster board and spend hours combing through old magazines, looking for people, places, and things that caught my eye. Wielding a pair of scissors that glided through each magazine’s glossy pages, I’d glue the images to the poster board, creating a colorful mishmash of my interests. I’ve never been an artistic person like my father, but those murals were a fun form of self-expression.

Now, in adulthood, I know that junk journals fill that same need, but also a greater need of preserving glimpses of the past in the forms of ephemera (printed materials meant to eventually be thrown away) such as those same magazines, photographs, brochures, notes, sheet music, movie or concert ticket stubs, train or airplane ticket stubs, and more.

If you’re unfamiliar with them, a junk journal is a notebook made with recycled materials that include the above-mentioned materials, as well as small items such as buttons, dried flower petals, and scraps of fabric. Like regular scrapbooks, you can embellish the pages of your journal with packets of stickers, ribbons, stamps, and other items usually sold on scrapbooking websites.

Blogger Wendy Sy writes that the appeal of a junk journal can lie in making it a space where you envision your goals – sort of like a vision board – or it can be a place where you preserve the past. Your junk journal doesn’t even have to be tailored to you, either – maybe it chronicles a relationship with a longtime friend or romantic partner.

“I like to think of a junk journal as a mini time machine,” Sy writes on stylemeetsstory.com. “Once you create one, you can flip through the pages and be transported back to the emotions you felt on your first date, or various mementos of that unforgettable trip you took to Paris.”

And, much like a traditional journal, your homemade keepsake can contain your thoughts, emotions, and even inspirational quotes. Still, Sy recommends that the visual elements should take center stage.

“Whether or not to write in your junk journal pages is completely up to your preference. The beauty of this project is that there’s no right way to do it,” she says. “Lots of people add their own words or favorite quotes on the pages to add a more personal feel, capturing memories and feelings. But you can also focus solely on the photos and decor since junk journals are visual books.”