Creating a Junk Journal

I was recently introduced to the concept of junk journals whilst looking through blogs for inspiration at a time when I was feeling a little creatively drained. The idea of taking scraps of paper and sticking them into a sketchbook to create new and exciting surfaces was right up my street.

I have been slowly amassing a volume of papers and fabric offcuts over the years which I keep out of sight in a box in my cupboard. I keep them because I’m certain one day I’ll have a use for them, but until now I didn’t know exactly what to do with them. I also have a collection of sketchbooks that I’ve used once or twice to doodle in or make notes, but have then later abandoned.

 A junk journal sounded like the perfect way to combine the two and also kick start my creativity.
The process of creating the journal is very easy and enjoyable. I have been trying to make the pages unconsciously, by sticking in the different papers wherever I want without thinking too hard about how they look. Unfortunately, I seem to be falling into a trap of arranging the them in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to me which is not really the point.

The surfaces I have created are very inspiring in themselves. Over the course of the project so far, I have found renewed creativity and I haven’t even filled in all the pages yet! My intention is to keep adding layers of either more paper/fabric or layers of paint/printmaking to further enhance the surfaces.

I have always been inspired by layers of old and new, particularly within urban areas, and looking at the decay of man made structures. Although I’m dealing with paper, I’d like to reflect that marking and degeneration of surface in my journal.

Here are some more examples of my junk journal pages.