If you love looking through handmade journals — the kind packed with tea dyed paper, vintage postcards, hand-rolled paper beads, and little hidden paper clips — this flip-through is a good place to spend twenty minutes. I'm showing all five journals from my current Etsy restock, walking through each one cover to cover so you can see exactly what's inside before it finds a new home.
What we cover
Five handmade junk journals, each with a full flip-through: the "Franken Journal" with its upholstery fabric lining and sewn paper cover, a vintage doily felt journal built around rescued library books and Cheery Bird subscription goodies, a large and small version of "Lilac Avenue" with hand-painted covers and hand-rolled paper beads, and an honest look at what I learned between making my earliest journals and where my work is now. Each journal also comes with a box or bag of extras — envelopes, booklets, origami pieces, fiber bundles — so those get shown too.
What you'll learn
What goes into a sellable handmade journal — pockets, envelopes, hidden paper clips, journaling spots, mini booklets, tuck spots, tags, and ruffle pages, and how these elements layer together across signatures to give a journal both structure and room to personalise.
How upholstery fabric works as a lining material — I use it on the inside of the Franken Journal cover to hide all the raw sewing and give it a clean, finished feel. It's sturdy, it holds, and it keeps the interior looking intentional rather than chaotic.
Why I use old book pages without guilt — most of the book pages in my journals came from library books that had already been discarded and were headed for incineration. Hundreds of books, left out in the rain, taken to be burned. Knowing that changes how I feel about cutting into them, and I hope it changes how you feel too.
What paper warping actually looks like — and what causes it — the Lilac Avenue Large journal is one I made early on, before I understood glue chemistry. Some of the pages have warped, and I show them honestly. Water-based glue pulls moisture into the paper; that's what causes the wave. I price the journal to reflect it, and I mention it so you know what to watch for in your own work.
How hand-rolled paper beads read on a spine — the Lilac Avenue journals have beads running up the spine and across the cover, and being able to see them up close (versus in a still photo) makes clear how much texture they add to an otherwise flat surface.
What I include in the extras bags and boxes, including:
- Charmed paper clips (a paper clip with a small charm — I had to think about what to call them)
- Origami envelopes
- Booklets with themed paper
- Fiber art bundles — about a metre each of nine different fibres, for journal closures and tag tops
- Fun paper packs with loose decorative bits including heart doilies and lace
- A correspondence box repurposed as a keepsake container
How a hidden paper clip works as a page marker — I have a full tutorial on these linked in the description, but you can see them in use here: they clip onto a page, hold tucked-in pieces securely, and slide to wherever you're working in the journal. They don't open all the way, which is what keeps things from falling out.
How fabric flowers are made from glued and hand-sewn fabric scraps — on the Lilac Avenue journals I cut small pieces of fabric, glued them into a flower shape, then hand sewed around the edge and finished with beads at the centre. They become journaling cards — write on the back, embellish the front.
What a "middle pignature" is for — I keep accidentally calling it that, but the idea is real: a loose signature tucked into the centre of the journal that you can move around. Wherever you place it, it can point you directly to the section you're working in.
Tips & gotchas
Water-based glues warp paper. Use acetone-based glue instead. This is the lesson I learned the hard way on the Lilac Avenue Large journal — some of those pages have a noticeable wave to them, and it's entirely down to using a water-based adhesive. Acetone-based glue doesn't carry moisture into the paper, so it doesn't pull the fibres and distort the surface. If you're gluing lots of layers into a journal, this matters.
Don't feel bad about using book pages. I get comments about it regularly — "how can you rip up books?" — and I understand the instinct. But a huge portion of the book pages in my journals came from library discards that were going to be incinerated. Hundreds of books, left out in the rain in large tubs. I've kept as many as I can. If you're sourcing pages ethically and giving them a second life, there's nothing to feel bad about.
Score before you fold. Any time you're folding stiff paper, cardstock, or a reinforced cover — score the fold line first. It keeps the edge clean and prevents cracking or uneven creasing, especially with heavier materials like the cardstock-backed felt cover on the doily journal.
Reinforce felt and fabric covers with cardstock before sewing. Felt on its own is too soft to hold structure as a journal cover. On the vintage doily journal I backed the felt with cardstock and then a layer of good quality scrapbook paper before sewing around the edges. It stays pliable but has enough body to protect the pages.
Transparent or very light thread can be just as intentional as visible stitching. On some signatures I use thread so fine it's nearly invisible from the front — the stitching is there, holding things together, but the paper surface reads clean. On others the zigzag is the point. Both are deliberate choices, not accidents.
The extras bags and fibre bundles are there because I know from experience that having the right scrap of lace or the right colour of thread at the right moment is half the work. Most of what's in these journals started as something else: a discarded book, a subscription box, a metre of eyelash trim. That's what junk journalling is, really — finding the thing that was nearly lost and giving it somewhere to live.
