You already have everything you need to start junk journaling. It's probably sitting around your house right now.
Junk journaling is one of the most accessible, deeply personal, and creatively fulfilling practices you can adopt. It doesn't require expensive supplies, artistic training, or a perfectly curated aesthetic. What it does require is a willingness to slow down, to look at ordinary objects with fresh eyes, and to trust that your unique perspective is worth preserving.
This guide covers everything: what junk journaling actually is, why it works as a mindfulness and self-expression tool, how to get started, and how to keep going. Whether you've never made a single journal page or you've been collaging for years, there's something here for you.
What Is Junk Journaling?
Junk journaling is an art form that uses everyday paper ephemera to create layered, textured journal pages that tell a story. Think receipts, ticket stubs, packaging, old book pages, magazine clippings, envelopes, washi tape, and anything else you'd typically toss out.
The word "junk" is a bit misleading. It simply means you're using materials the world has deemed disposable, and finding meaning, beauty, and narrative in them. A torn coffee sleeve. A sticky note you almost threw out. A corner of a map from a trip you took three years ago. These scraps become the raw material of memory and meaning.
Junk journaling sits at the intersection of scrapbooking, collage art, and reflective journaling, but it has its own distinct spirit. It's looser, more intuitive, and more forgiving than traditional scrapbooking. There are no rules about layouts, color schemes, or photo placement. The process itself is the point.
People come to junk journaling from all different directions. Some find it through art journaling or bullet journaling, others through a love of vintage paper and collage. What they all tend to discover is the same thing: it slows you down in the best possible way.
Junk Journaling as a Mindfulness Practice
We talk a lot about mindfulness in abstract terms: being present, slowing down, quieting the mind. For many people, that's easier said than done when you're sitting still and trying not to think.
Junk journaling offers a different entry point into mindfulness, one that gives your hands something to do while your mind finds its natural quiet.
The act of sorting through paper scraps, deciding what stays and what goes, layering textures and colors: it demands just enough of your attention to settle the mind, without becoming stressful. You enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called a "flow state," that absorbed, timeless feeling where you're fully engaged and at ease.
Here's what the mindfulness practice of junk journaling actually looks like in daily life:
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Noticing. You start paying attention to the paper that moves through your life. Ticket stubs, packaging, junk mail. Instead of seeing clutter, you begin to see raw material. This noticing is itself a mindfulness practice.
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Slowing. Arranging a page invites you to take your time. You move pieces around, step back, try again. The process naturally regulates your nervous system.
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Releasing perfectionism. Because the materials are already used, already wonderfully imperfect, there's very little pressure to make something flawless. That permission is genuinely freeing.
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Presence. You're here, with these materials, making this page. That's the whole practice.
I've experienced this firsthand. Some spreads come together for me in just a few minutes. Others ask me to sit with them, to move things around, step away, come back. That slower pace is where the real mindfulness lives.
Why Junk Journaling Works for Self-Expression
Traditional journaling asks you to put your inner world into words. That's a powerful practice for many people, and junk journaling opens up a complementary path for those who find visual expression more natural, or who simply want another outlet alongside writing.
In a junk journal, you're choosing a torn piece of a map, a color of washi tape that feels right, a phrase you cut from a magazine. The meaning is encoded visually and intuitively, and often it only becomes clear to you after the page is done.
This is one of the things I find most profound about the practice: your junk journal pages will show you things about yourself that you didn't know you were feeling.
The visual and tactile nature of junk journaling engages different parts of the brain than verbal journaling does. It accesses emotion, memory, and creativity in ways that are uniquely its own. This is why art therapy has such a long and well-documented history, and why junk journaling, even as an informal personal practice, carries real emotional and psychological value.
Your journal becomes a record of your inner landscape, told through textures, colors, images, and the scraps of life you chose to keep.
How to Get Started: Supplies & Setup
One of the most beautiful things about junk journaling is that the most meaningful materials are the ones that carry personal history, and those are already in your life.
The Journal Itself
Your junk journal can be almost any bound book or notebook. Many junk journalers repurpose old composition books, vintage hardcover books, or handmade journals constructed from recycled materials. The paper doesn't need to be acid-free or archival. Slightly aged, textured, or imperfect paper can make for interesting pages. I personally LOVE Leuchtturm1917 dotted grid journals, and tend to stick to those.
Essential Supplies
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A glue stick or Mod Podge for adhering paper layers
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Scissors (and optionally a craft knife)
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Washi tape in a few patterns or colors
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Pens, markers, or stamps for adding text and details
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A collection container. I use an old cigar box I found at a thrift store for $1.99!
Materials to Collect
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Old magazines and catalogs
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Envelopes, postcards, and greeting cards
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Ticket stubs, boarding passes, and receipts
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Wrapping paper and paper packaging
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Pages from old books or sheet music
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Maps, travel materials, and brochures
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Stickers, rubber stamps, and decorative paper
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Vintage paper ephemera found at thrift stores or estate sales
Start a collection at any time! Keep a box or folder where you deposit interesting paper scraps as you come across them. When you sit down to journal, you'll have a curated selection to work with, and the act of sorting through it is itself part of the practice.
I also keep a running junk journaling supply list on Amazon with the specific tools and materials I reach for most often. Check it out if you want some guidance on where to start.
Core Techniques for Beginners
Junk journaling is wonderfully open-ended, and a few foundational techniques will help you build confidence and develop your own style.
Layering
Layering is the heart of junk journaling. You're building a page from the bottom up: a background layer, then midground elements, then focal pieces, then small details and text on top. Each layer adds depth, texture, and visual interest. Feel free to partially cover something beautiful. What peeks out from underneath a torn edge is part of the story.
Tearing vs. Cutting
Torn edges have a softness and organic quality that feels very natural in a junk journal. Experiment with both tearing and cutting. A cleanly cut photo or text block can serve as a strong focal point, while torn edges blend into backgrounds more naturally. Many junk journalers use a combination of both on every page.
Creating Visual Balance
Trust your eye. Step back and look at your page as you work. If something feels like it wants to shift, move things around before you glue. The beauty of the process is that everything stays flexible until you're ready to commit.
Adding Text & Words
Words are powerful anchors on a junk journal page. You can add text by writing directly, cutting words and phrases from magazines, stamping, or printing and adhering. Meaningful phrases, affirmations, quotes, and even single words can transform a visual page into something that truly speaks.
Working with Color
If you're new to working with color, start with a limited palette of one, two, or three tones that feel cohesive. Over time you'll develop an intuitive sense of what works together. Or, create a rainbow or color gradient across the page. Or, be random! You really can't go wrong when it comes to junk journaling.
Using Affirmations in Your Junk Journal
Affirmations and junk journaling are a natural pairing, but the magic isn't just in encountering them later when you flip back through your pages. It happens in the making.
When you build a page around an affirmation, you're grounding that intention into your mind through every creative decision you make. The colors you reach for, the images that feel right, the textures you layer in: all of it is quietly reinforcing the words at the center of the page. You're not just reading an affirmation. You're seeding it, building new neural pathways through a creative and meditative act.
I love thinking of my junk journal as a documentation of my inner world. The emotional and spiritual landscape that my written journal captures in words, expressed here in a completely different form. Affirmations lend themselves beautifully to this. They become part of a visual language that tells the story of your inner world in a way that only you can fully understand.
And something genuinely magical tends to happen over time. Small design decisions, a word you chose almost intuitively, an image that just felt right in the moment: months later, those choices can take on entirely new meaning. The page you made becomes a record of something you were calling in before you even had words for it.
Some ways to work with affirmations in your junk journal:
- Use an affirmation as the starting point for a page, and let every material you choose reflect its meaning
- Choose a daily affirmation and incorporate it into that day's page
- Create an intention spread to mark the beginning of a new week or month
- Scatter affirmation strips across multiple pages as a thread running through your journal
My 150 Positive Affirmation Pack was designed with exactly this kind of intentional creative use in mind. Beautifully formatted, ready to print, cut, and collage directly into your pages, they become part of the visual story you're telling.
Using Collage Packs & Curated Materials
Part of the joy of junk journaling is hunting for materials, and there's also something wonderful about working with a curated set of paper ephemera that's been selected for its visual and tonal cohesion.
My Collage Packs are designed to give you a ready-to-use collection of vintage-inspired, beautifully curated materials that work together visually and thematically. They're particularly useful if you're just starting out and want to create pages that feel pulled-together, or if you want to introduce a more artistic element to add to your found materials.
Curated materials also serve as a beautiful foundation layer that your personal ephemera can live on top of. The ticket stubs, the receipts, the odds and ends of your actual life layer naturally over a cohesive base. The result is pages that feel intentional, deeply personal, and artistic.
Tips for Sustaining the Practice
Starting a junk journal is easy. Maintaining a regular creative practice, one that feels meaningful and nourishing, takes a little more intentionality. Here's what works for me.
Start small and stay consistent
Even spending fifteen minutes sorting out a few pieces from your collection, or gluing a background layer, counts as showing up for your practice. Consistency matters more than scope. Small sessions add up to something beautiful over time.
Collect continuously
Keep your collection container somewhere accessible, on your desk or the kitchen counter, so that adding to it is effortless. When an interesting piece of mail arrives, when a packaging insert catches your eye, when you finish reading a magazine: those go straight in the box. The collection builds itself when you make the habit easy.
Embrace every page
Every journal will have pages you absolutely love and pages that surprise you in other ways. Some of my most interesting spreads came from sessions where I was working through something and just let the process lead. Every page has something to offer.
Vary your source materials
If your pages start to feel repetitive, bring in something new. A different color palette, materials from a different era or aesthetic, something from a recent trip or life event. Your source materials are your visual vocabulary, and expanding them expands your creative range.
Let it be a meditation, not a performance
Social media has made junk journaling wonderfully popular and community-driven. Your journal is also allowed to be entirely private, entirely yours. Some of the most meaningful pages never need to be shared. Give yourself full permission to create just for you.
Free Resource: Creative Guide to Junk Journaling
If you're ready to go deeper, I've put everything I know about getting started and building a sustainable practice into a free downloadable resource.
Download the free Creative Guide to Junk Journaling →
It covers a comprehensive introduction to the practice, an essential supply guide, step-by-step techniques, creative inspiration, mindset guidance, and personal stories from my own journaling journey. It's a digital download, available instantly and completely free.
This is the guide I wish I'd had when I started. I hope it becomes a well-worn resource in your creative toolkit.
Junk journaling is a practice of paying attention: to the materials that pass through your life, to the emotions underneath your daily experience, to the stories worth preserving. It asks very little of you technically, and gives back so much: presence, creativity, a record of who you are right now.
Start with what you have. Start small. Let the practice find its own shape.
With love ♥
Stephanie