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junk journals

A handmade junk journal, its pages built from scrap paper. Photo Artisannie, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Junk journals

11 traced influences · 4 sources

dig junk journals

What it took directly

  1. documentedJunk journaling took from mixed-media journals such as Keri Smith's 2007 Wreck This Journal"Perkins, 50, also traces the form to mixed-media journals such as Keri Smith’s 2007 hit project “Wreck This Journal,”" Harmeet Kaur, CNN (Jan 25, 2025), reporting crafting blogger Jennifer Perkins
  2. documentedThe 2025 junk-journal boom took from Martina Calvi's 2024 book, The Art of Memory Collecting"Martina Calvi, a junk journal celebrity of sorts, who is attributed with jump starting the practice with her 2024 book The Art of Memory Collecting." Paula Wilson, Craft Industry Alliance (Sep 9, 2025)
  3. documentedThe 2025 junk-journal boom took from TikTok, where makers post their journals"Known as Junk Journals, there are more than 400,000 posts of people's creations on TikTok as they document their artistic journeys online." Alice Cullinane, BBC News (8 March 2025)

What it learned to do

  1. documentedJunk journaling learned from Wreck This Journal's permission to wreck the page"And prior to that, illustrator Keri Smith’s 2007 Wreck This Journal, which sold over 3 million copies, encouraged pre-teens and up to be creative by literally destroying the pages in the notebook" CT Jones, Rolling Stone (January 9, 2025)
  2. documentedSelam Haile learned from university, where she was introduced to the hobby"Selam Haile started making her own junk journals in 2017 after being introduced to the hobby during university." Alice Cullinane, BBC News (8 March 2025)
  3. documentedDanielle Catton learned from a YouTuber who introduced her to junk journaling"These pieces of her everyday life sat accumulating in a large plastic bin until recently, when she came across a YouTuber who introduced her to the practice of junk journaling." Harmeet Kaur, CNN (Jan 25, 2025)

The tradition it sits in

  1. documentedJunk journaling comes from 1990s zinemaking"She considers the hobby an iteration of zinemaking, the self-published DIY medium that she engaged in as a teenager in the ‘90s (and that is seeing its own resurgence)." Harmeet Kaur, CNN (Jan 25, 2025), reporting Jennifer Perkins
  2. documentedThe junk journal comes from the scrapbook"She said junk journals have evolved from scrapbooks and provided an accessible cheap hobby for all." Alice Cullinane, BBC News (8 March 2025), reporting journal maker Meg Frances
  3. inferredJunk journaling comes from the zine's cheap, do-it-yourself book and the scrapbook's keepsakes, at once"A freeform hybrid of collage, scrapbooking and traditional journaling, the creative hobby is having a moment right now." inferred — CNN reports Jennifer Perkins tracing the hobby to 1990s zines; the BBC reports Meg Frances saying junk journals evolved from scrapbooks. That it is both at once is our reading of the two accounts

Where the whole form comes from

  1. documentedJunk journaling comes from the original idea of the scrapbook: the scraps of everyday life"In many respects it’s the return to the origins of ‘scrap’ booking, where participants added the scraps of very day life to their scrapbooks or journal." Paula Wilson, Craft Industry Alliance (Sep 9, 2025)
  2. documentedAmerican scrapbooking comes from family and movement record-keeping, from the Civil War to suffrage and abolition"Scrapbooks, usually memorializing a family or group history, were popularized in America during the Civil War, and used during the suffrage and abolition movement to preserve newspaper clippings." CT Jones, Rolling Stone (January 9, 2025)

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