If you love finding stationery supplies that genuinely work for junk journaling and collage — the kind with vellum stickers, vintage ephemera packs, postage stamp washi tapes, and lace paper doilies — this unboxing and quick project video is worth a look. I ordered a big haul from Stationery Pal and went through everything piece by piece, then turned some of the supplies into a journal cover topper right there on the desk, no plan, just going with it.
What we cover
This is an unboxing of 30+ Stationery Pal products followed by a short collage project — a sewn journal cover topper made from watercolored book pages, ephemera, vellum stickers, die-cuts, and a paper doily, finished on the sewing machine and mounted onto a library discard book cover.
What you'll learn
How to use a water brush pen for wet-tearing napkins and ephemera — fill the barrel with water, wet the edges of the image you want to isolate, and tear slowly for a naturally ragged edge that looks far more finished than a cut edge when you decoupage or collage it down.
How to ink the edges of postage stamp washi tape before applying it — the perforated washi strips look like individual postage stamps once you tear them off, and a light pass of ink around the edges before you glue them down makes them read as real stamps rather than just printed stickers.
How to build and transfer a collage arrangement without losing your layout — lay everything out dry first, take a photo of the full arrangement, then remove the pieces and glue them down one at a time using the photo as a reference. Simple, but it saves a lot of frustration.
How to cover text or words you don't want showing on ephemera — layer another piece directly on top. The piece underneath becomes texture and depth rather than a distraction.
How to turn a collage piece into a journal cover topper, including:
- Gluing the finished collage onto a piece of free-dyed or tea-dyed cardstock for body and structure
- Running it through the sewing machine twice in two different thread colors to stitch around the perimeter
- Inking the outer edges for a finished, cohesive look
- Gluing it onto an upcycled library discard book cover
- Folding and gluing three sides down to turn the whole topper into a pocket as well
How to use a sticker storage book to organize your washi tapes and stickers — the book has a shiny surface that stickers and washi samples adhere to temporarily. You spend time upfront getting everything off its backing and into the book, then you can flip through and pull what you need without digging through individual packets.
Watercoloring book pages quickly as a collage background — cheap watercolors on old book pages, colors blending loosely without any plan. It dries fast, gives you a soft vintage base layer, and requires almost no skill to get a usable result.
Tips & gotchas
Ink the edges of postage stamp washi before it goes down. Once it's glued, you've lost your chance. A quick press around the perimeter of each little stamp with an ink pad before sticking it makes the difference between "cute sticker" and something that genuinely reads as a postage stamp.
Take a photo of your collage before you move anything. Even a quick phone snap. Once you start lifting pieces to glue, the whole arrangement in your head disappears. The photo is your map.
When a word or line of text on an ephemera piece is bothering you, just cover it. Layer a smaller piece on top — another sticker, a tag, a strip of washi, a bow from a pack. It becomes a design decision rather than a mistake.
The sticker storage book is worth building slowly. Spending an hour in front of the TV getting stickers off their individual backings and onto the shiny pages pays back every time you sit down to journal or collage and can actually see what you have.
Stationery Pal stock moves fast. Items that are in the description links when the video goes up can sell out quickly — if something catches your eye, it's worth checking sooner rather than later.
One small note on the chain bookmark (item 13 in the haul): the one in this order had something slightly off with the charm end — probably a one-off issue, but worth checking product photos on the site before ordering if that detail matters to you.
And that's really the point — you don't need a full afternoon, a project plan, or even a particularly tidy desk. A few pieces of vintage paper, some vellum stickers, a little ink around the edges, and a pass through the sewing machine, and you have something that can live on the cover of an upcycled library book or become a pocket on the front of a junk journal. If you want to go deeper on the collage side of things, I have a separate video on a collage formula that takes some of the guesswork out of what goes where — I've linked it below.
