Junk Journal Versus Art Journal

It's a new year and time to start a new junk journal. My other one was bursting at the seams and since I was moving, I didn't have time to build a new one.  But yesterday when I was sorting out the boxes from storage, I found all kinds of ephemera.  The list includes cancelled postage stamps, old brochures, business cards, jewelry bits and bobs, photos, and stickers. The boxes were in storage at least 13 years, some much longer because the boxes never got unpacked from move to move. Also, I found all my missing commercial rubber stamps (I mean the kind you buy, not the kind you carve). So I'm going to start having monthly craft parties for anyone that wants to come over and work on their junk journals or any craft project really. Before I can make a new junk journal, I need to find the binders I bought for it. Things are still a jumble here.

I just wanted to point out that an art journal isn't the same as a junk journal. I know we all want to have fancy art pages to display on Youtube or Flickr or whatever, so an art journal is the one you want to slave over and do your best art. But that is a lot of pressure and limiting if you get intimidated easily and don't have gobs of time.

A junk journal is an anti-art journal. It's messy, it's cumbersome, and everything can go in it but the kitchen sink. I like to make mine in sections for poetry, art, drawing, collage, ephemera, lists and so on. But I'm looking at some articles and Youtube videos and they are not really making a distinction between art journals and junk journals. Junk journals should be quick, dirty and freeing.  Keep your ideas there, and when you find a good one, then you can explore it further and fancy it up in your art journal. Right? Right.