If you've ever sat down with a pile of beautiful papers and absolutely no idea what to do with them, this video is for you. I made this checklist because I kept finding myself in exactly that situation — head full of inspiration from Pinterest and other people's journals, and then blank the moment I actually sat down to make something. The checklist is a simple, organised list of everything that can go into a junk journal, broken into sections: the cover, papers to include, ways to decorate pages, and things to add to pages. You can download it for free (link in the description), print it out, and tick things off as you work through each journal you make.
In this video I walk through the whole checklist section by section, and then do a flip-through of one of my own journals so you can see how all those individual elements actually come together in a finished book.
What we cover
The checklist has five sections — cover embellishments, paper types, page decorating techniques, things to add to pages, and a miscellaneous catch-all. I go through each one in detail, showing physical examples of the less obvious items (belly bands, doily tucks, altered paperclips, eyelash trim, fabric scrap clusters, and more), and then flip through a completed journal so you can see them all in context.
What you'll learn
How to use a checklist framework to beat creative overwhelm — the idea is simple: you're not trying to do everything on the list, you're scanning it to find what fits this journal, and ticking things off as you go. It turns a blank starting point into a series of small decisions.
Cover embellishments worth knowing, including:
- Tassels, beads, and charms hanging from the spine
- Wooden embellishments (small decorative pieces, not the cover board itself)
- Closure options — wraparound ribbon, bulldog clips, crocodile clips from jewellery making, flap closures
- Metal book corners
- Book plates (I have a separate tutorial on making these — linked in the description)
- Beads or buttons sewn onto the binding itself as you go through each hole
An honest survey of papers that work well in junk journals, including:
- Tea-dyed paper, scrapbook paper, book pages, music pages, dictionary pages
- Tracing paper and baking paper (both look beautiful and add texture)
- Wallpaper, wrapping paper, ledger paper
- Acetate pages used as a kind of dashboard at the front
- Doilies, paper bags, coloring book pages
Page-decorating techniques to do before you bind, including:
- Tearing and inking edges
- Corner cutting and border punch edges
- Stenciling with an ink blending tool
- Sewing on paper — both decorative stitching and functional (holding lace down, adding ruffles)
- Stamping, embossing, washi tape, rub-on transfers
- Stickers and fussy-cut images; quote stickers (I have a free printable set linked in the description)
- Postage stamps
Things to add to pages — the section I think of as "adding to" rather than "decorating" — these are elements that layer onto the page rather than being worked into it:
- Pockets, envelopes, and glassine bags
- Belly bands — a strip of decorated paper you add to a page so something can tuck behind it
- Flip-outs, flip-ups, and flip-downs — envelopes or folded panels that extend beyond the page edge or open out
- Altered paperclips — ribbon-wrapped or charm-added clips that become little decorative pieces in their own right
- Doily tucks — a doily folded in half over the page edge, held with a small paperclip, with something tucked inside
- Mini booklets — small handmade books that sit inside pockets
- Tags, tabs (washi tape, paper, leather, or fabric), and journaling cards
- Eyelash trim and lace
- Napkins and fabric scraps used in collage, or tucked into the binding
- Fabric scrap clusters — small gathered bundles of fabric pinned or glued into corners
- Paper flowers, bows, ruffled ribbon
- Bling — rhinestones, sewn-on gems, small brads
- Buttons
- Safety pins with seed beads, bulldog pins with charms
- Quotes pulled from old books, inked at the edges and used on pockets or pages
- Hearts or small cutout shapes floated in the middle of a signature, attached to the binding thread
- Calico, ribbon, and other textile scraps
How to make your own stencils — print an image from Google, cut it out of an acetate page, and you have a reusable stencil for almost nothing.
Tips & gotchas
Decorate and embellish your pages before you bind the signatures into the book. Working on a flat sheet is so much easier than trying to sew, stencil, or ink edges once everything is bound up. I do most of my decorating flat, then bind, then add the final layers of embellishment. This question comes up constantly in groups, so it's worth saying plainly: flat first, then bind.
When you're in a creative funk — genuinely stuck, can't find your mojo — don't force a whole journal. Instead, make a batch of little mini booklets. They're quick, satisfying, and they stack up beautifully. When the inspiration comes back, you've got a box full of things to add to journals and it feels like finding treasure.
You don't need to buy stencils. Print an image you like from Google, cut it out of an acetate page, and you've got a stencil ready to use with an ink blending tool. The one I show in the flip-through was made exactly that way.
The miscellaneous section of the checklist is genuinely for overflow — little bells on tassels, bulldog pins with charms, safety pins strung with seed beads for pockets and covers. None of those fit neatly into the other sections, but they're worth keeping in mind when you're looking around your craft area and wondering what else could go in.
That's a much better problem to have. I still flip through my own finished journals for ideas, and a lot of what's in this video came from one journal I made about five years ago that I've held onto ever since, just because looking through it always gives me somewhere to start.
