If you've got a plain paper bag — the kind a prescription came in, maybe sitting crumpled at the edge of your desk — this tutorial shows what happens when you stop planning and just start making. I didn't know what this journal was going to be when I picked up that bag. I didn't even know I was going to reach for hand lotion as a painting medium. But by the end, what I had was a grungy, textured, branch-bound junk journal that I'm genuinely in love with, and the whole process is here on camera, unplanned and unfiltered.
What we cover
This is a full build of a junk journal from a single paper bag — cover construction, signature making, branch spine binding with twine, and interior embellishment — worked through in real time, without a plan, in a grunge and steampunk aesthetic. The flip-through at the end shows the finished pages with pockets, journaling spots, stitching details, tea bag ephemera, and a handmade closure.
What you'll learn
How to prepare a paper bag as a journal cover — including scrunching and re-scrunching for texture, applying hand lotion to create a feathery, fabric-like surface quality, and sponging paint over the top for uneven, grungy color. The cereal box insert added inside gives the floppy bag enough structure to work with at the sewing machine.
How to machine-sew a paper bag cover — stitching all around the outside and adding decorative lines of stitching to the cover surface. I wanted the stitching to be visible, so I went back and added more passes until it read clearly — the kind of detail you only know to do once you see it on camera.
How to distress and age leather or faux leather offcuts — taking pristine-edged pieces and ruining the edges deliberately, then combining them with a cereal box bookplate element using brads (gold paper fasteners). The result is a layered, textured cover element with real depth.
How to apply studs to paper and layered materials without specialist tools — pushing the prongs through and using something flat to bend them down. I'd never done this before filming and it turned out to be genuinely easy. Worth knowing they're findable at secondhand stores.
How to make signatures from mixed papers — tearing tea-dyed watercolor paper, manila envelope, and assorted stash papers down to size, inking all the edges for consistency, and keeping the pages intentionally uneven in length for a ragged, organic look.
How to bind two signatures around a branch spine using twine, including:
- Threading a needle with natural twine and leaving a generous tail rather than cutting it close
- Poking holes through both signatures at once so they align even when the pages are different lengths
- Creating a loop at the spine to seat and hold the branch in place
- Wrapping around the branch at each pass and pulling everything tight before moving to the next hole
- Finishing with a double knot and trimming the excess
How to embellish interior pages in grunge style, including:
- Gluing tea bags in as ephemera, tucked into folds or peeking out from pages
- Creating paper ruffles from scraps left over when tearing pages to size
- Layering gold thread, scrunched and glued under other elements
- Adding staples as a deliberate design element rather than a structural fix
- Stitching two watercolor pages together and anchoring the visible stitch with a sticker
How to add a handmade closure using brads and leather strips — marking holes, attaching the closure piece to the back cover with brads, adding a stitched reinforcement strip, and finishing with a stud for detail.
How to cover messy binding or structural elements — using masking tape to press everything flat before covering with a strip of material, so the finished surface sits cleanly without bulging.
Tips & gotchas
Grunge is genuinely forgiving — and that's not just reassurance. Crooked stitches, holes that wandered slightly off-mark, threads left trailing: all of it reads as intentional in this aesthetic. I made actual mistakes during the binding and they're there in the video, and they look fine. If this is your first time trying an experimental binding, a grunge-style journal is the right place to do it.
On thread length: leave more than you think you need. Seriously. I ended up with way too much twine and had to cut it back — but that's a much easier problem than running short mid-binding and having to join thread inside a tight spine. Cut generously.
When your two signatures are different lengths and you can't use a single template, nest one inside the other and pierce both at the same time. It takes one extra minute and saves you the frustration of trying to match holes on separate signatures that don't share a common edge.
For the embellishment stage, the temptation is to keep going. I know because I kept going. Tea bags, yarn, gold thread, more stitching, more studs — at some point it tips from richly layered into overwhelming. I tried to stop a few times before I actually stopped. Give yourself permission to step back and look before adding the next thing.
Use masking tape before you cover any element that has loose or raised pieces underneath. It takes thirty seconds and keeps everything flat so your covering material sits properly instead of bumping up over whatever's beneath it.
The making-it-up-as-I-go approach isn't a workaround for not having a plan; it's a way of staying genuinely curious about what the materials want to do. Once you're comfortable with the basic binding mechanics and you know a few ways to add texture and age to a surface, this kind of unscripted making becomes its own thing — less tutorial, more play. That's where this journal came from, and it's what I hope you take from watching it.
