This little sewing-themed junk journal is one of my favourites — packed with pockets, fabric clusters, embroidery floss, doilies, ruffles, and hand-stamped stickers, all built around the theme of sewing and slow, handmade things. I made three of them, and by the time I filmed this flip-through the other two had already sold. If you love textural, heavily embellished journals or you're looking for ideas on how to pull a cohesive theme through every page, this is worth a slow watch.
What we cover
A complete flip-through of a finished sewing-themed junk journal — every signature, pocket, tag, and embellishment detail. Along the way I talk through how specific elements were made: the acetate stencil, the stamp-to-sticker technique, the staple-bound mini notebook tucked inside, and how a sewing machine fits into bookmaking even if you've never sewn a garment in your life.
What you'll learn
How to make a stencil from an internet image using acetate paper — print the image, lay acetate over the top, cut it out, and you have a reusable stencil. I picked up this idea from Jenny Beli and it's become one of my go-to techniques for getting a custom motif without needing to buy a die or a pre-made stencil.
How to turn a rubber stamp into a reusable sticker — stamp directly onto sticker paper, cut it out, and you've got a sticker you can place anywhere in a journal. I prep a whole batch of these at once in different designs so I have them on hand when I'm embellishing.
How tabs work as a design element on the spine edge — tabs aren't just functional dividers. When you layer them with charms, fabric trim, and fluffy fringe along the fore-edge of a book, they give the journal that beautiful, busy, treasure-chest quality. This journal has quite a few and you can see in the flip-through exactly how much character they add to the side of the book.
How to make a simple staple-bound mini booklet to tuck inside a journal — no complicated binding, just a few sheets folded and stapled. It becomes a writing spot that feels like its own little object inside the larger book.
How to use a sewing machine specifically for paper and bookmaking, including:
- Sewing down paper ruffles
- Attaching fabric clusters and trim
- Binding elements without any garment-making experience — this was the very first thing I ever used my sewing machine for, and it's still the only thing I use it for
How a cohesive theme carries through every element — from scissor charms and button embellishments to sewing-themed quotes ("you can't buy happiness but you can buy fabric", "any day spent sewing is a good day"), the theme isn't just surface decoration. It runs through the papers, the tags, the stamped images, the fabric choices, everything.
How to create circle backgrounds using household objects as stencil guides — I used a pizza pan placed over the paper and sprayed through it to get the circular background on one of the pages. It's one of those things you discover by accident and then keep using.
How to use tea-dyed and found papers as journaling spots — lined paper backed with tea-stained paper, repurposed window-blind material cut into tags, baking paper envelopes — the journal is full of upcycled and repurposed materials that give pages texture and variety without buying everything new.
Tips & gotchas
The acetate stencil trick is simpler than it sounds, but the cutting matters. You're only tracing the outline of the printed image through the acetate — use sharp scissors or a craft knife and keep your lines clean, because a ragged edge will show up every time you ink through it. The payoff is a stencil that's completely custom to your theme and costs almost nothing.
On the sewing machine: don't let garment-sewing experience (or the lack of it) be a barrier here. Sewing on paper and fabric for bookmaking is a different activity entirely. You're not fitting, adjusting, or finishing seams — you're running a straight stitch along a ruffle or attaching a trim. If you've been curious about adding a sewing machine to your bookmaking practice, this journal is a good example of what's possible even when it's the first thing you ever sewed.
For the stamp-to-sticker technique, the key is prepping in batches. Stamping one at a time as you need them is slow and fiddly. Sit down with your sticker paper and a few stamps and make a sheet's worth at once — then you have a library of them to pull from while you're in embellishing mode and don't want to stop and swap tasks.
Buttons with text ("handmade with love") can be found very cheaply in bulk on eBay — I got a whole lot of them for almost nothing. For a themed journal they do a lot of work: they reinforce the theme, they add tactile dimension, and they photograph beautifully.
The journal construction itself follows a tutorial method I learned from another maker — once you have the structure sorted, the interior embellishing is where you make it your own. Having that structure as a repeatable base meant I could make three of these journals and focus all my creative energy on the pages rather than problem-solving the binding each time.
A small charm, a tucked tag, a tiny stamped detail on a fold. That's the quality I was going for with this one, and it's what I find most rewarding about this kind of making: the book keeps giving you things to find. If the sewing theme resonates with you, the free printable sheet of sewing quotes and words I made to go with these journals is linked below — it's two pages of phrases you can print and cut for your own pages.
