If your scraps drawer never seems to get any smaller no matter how much you use from it, this episode of the Scrap Busting series is a good one to sit with. I'd been running 20-minute scrap sessions for a while — making small standalone pieces — and somewhere around session 22 I started wondering whether journal pages might be a better use of that same 20 minutes. This video is me thinking that through out loud while actually making a page, and then showing you what I came out with.
What we cover
This is Episode 4 of the Scrap Busting series — a 20-minute timed session where I pivot from making standalone art pieces to making journal pages instead. I show the page I made during filming, the one I made just before I hit record, and I talk through why I think the journal-page format might suit this kind of quick creative session better. There's some real-time sewing, pocket-making, and a bit of honest back-and-forth about what this project is actually for.
What you'll learn
How to build a journal page from a book page base — starting with a book page (or any plain paper) as the foundation and layering scraps on top rather than hunting for a "pretty" starting point.
How to turn a non-writable surface into a journaling page, including:
- Sewing a felt pocket onto the page to create a hidden writing space
- Adding a small acetate pocket for a clear, lightweight enclosure
- Tucking in a journaling spot — in this case a little notepad page from a hotel — so there's always somewhere to actually write
How to use catalog pages, paper offcuts, and postage stamps as collage elements — not as centrepieces but as layered texture, the way you'd reach into a pile and use what your hand finds first.
Why a box of pre-made journal pages is worth keeping — instead of committing every page to a specific journal, you can build a stock of finished pages and pull from them whenever a new journal needs something interesting inside.
The difference between making for creation's sake and making with a destination — this one's harder to bullet-point, but it's genuinely in the video. I'd been doing the standalone pieces purely to exercise the creativity muscle every day, with no plan for where they'd go. Shifting to journal pages gave the same 20 minutes a slightly different quality — not that one is better, but that the feeling is different, and knowing that might help you decide which version of this project suits you.
Tips & gotchas
Book pages look beautiful as a base, but you can't write directly on most of them — the paper is too thin and the printed text shows through everything. The workaround I use is pockets: sew a felt pocket onto the page, slip a piece of plain paper inside, and suddenly you have a writing space that actually works. A small acetate pocket does the same job and adds a nice visual layer too.
One rule I set myself for these sessions: no going to look for prettier supplies until you've finished with what you pulled out. It sounds obvious, but without that rule it's easy to spend the 20 minutes rummaging instead of making. Pull a small selection before you start the timer, work with what's in front of you, and only then go looking for extras if time allows.
The pre-made page box idea is genuinely useful if you make journals regularly. These quick sessions produce pages that don't belong to any journal yet — keeping them in a box means when you're building something and it needs a pocket page or a collage page, you can just reach in. I already have one such box and it's one of those things I'm glad I started early.
I'm leaning toward both, because they scratch slightly different itches. The standalone pieces feel finished in themselves; the journal pages feel like they're going somewhere. Twenty minutes a day can hold both.
