Bikini-clad women sat sipping canned cocktails by the shallow finish of a swimming pool. Their sunscreen glistened in the summertime warmth, leaving a coconut aroma within the air.
However these sunbathers weren’t right here to tan. They have been right here for a junk journaling celebration.
Junk journaling, one more marker of youthful generations’ continued reversion to bodily media, is a catch-all time period for a craft apply that includes scrapbooking, collaging and journaling. Whereas its attraction lies in its refusal of exact definition, junk journaling typically consists of compiling scrap objects and keepsakes into curated notebooks, which might additionally comprise private musings, decorative stickers and different elaborations.
Nicolette Smith, left, and Elizabeth Nelson fill their journals on the Aug. 23 Junk Journal Membership celebration in Glendale.
(Kayla Otero)
Junk journals learn just like the rowdy daughters of the 2000s-era scrapbooks. Whereas sharing their memory-keeping moms’ pasted pages and nostalgic ethos, these journals have damaged household custom with their messy aesthetic and choice for oft-discarded objects. Tags, receipts, ticket stubs, sweet wrappers, even spam — they’re all gold for a junk journal.
“People say somebody’s trash is somebody’s treasure,” stated Olivia Jones, 36, an Irvine resident and proprietor of small stationery enterprise Pink Coast Studio. “That’s No. 1 for us junk journalers.”
Within the final 12 months, junk journaling has skyrocketed in recognition as influencers throughout the passion‘s community have recruited new crafters on social media, especially from TikTok. At the same time, in-person junk journaling clubs have cropped up across the country, turning the traditionally solo pastime into a social scene.
L.A.’s Junk Journal Membership, tagged “the original junk journal club,” served as a blueprint for a lot of of these organizations. In late August, greater than 50 crafters celebrated the membership’s first birthday at a Glendale pool celebration. (Extra would have come, however the rented venue capped attendance.)
They sprawled across the rim of the yard swimming pool and throughout the adjoining garden, their animal-print blankets and seaside towels crowded with paper scraps and glue sticks. Veteran journalers refilled matching Fujifilm picture printers, whereas newbies leafed by means of contemporary sticker books. As soon as unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the provides lay like a potluck unfold, free for the taking.
“Whenever I buy stickers for myself, it’s kind of excessive,” stated attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to attend the meetup. “But I brought them to share as well.”
Huang’s journal pages, crammed with receipts, photographs and meals packaging, chronicle her travels and each day adventures. Typically, she sits her associates down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell fashion, she stated.
“It’s like real-life Instagram,” she stated, laughing.
An expansion from Sophia Huang’s junk journal, that includes mementos from a go to to the Orange County Museum of Artwork.
(Sophia Huang)
It was practically 100 levels exterior in Glendale, however Huang and her fellow celebration attendees stayed on the Junk Journal Membership soiree for hours anyway — blissfully ignoring the sweat melting the make-up off their smiling faces.
Membership founder Nandi Owolo, 30, watched the revelry from a secluded lounge chair, sitting for the primary time all day, and marveled at what her little membership had change into.
Owolo, an Echo Park resident, began Junk Journal Membership just some months after she herself bought into the passion final 12 months. She started dabbling after a foot damage left her homebound, and she or he was thrilled to lastly discover a craft that felt accessible to her.
“I tried so many crafts. I can’t paint, can’t draw. I tried doing the embroidery hoops and the crocheting of little animals,” Owolo stated. “I tried it all, failed at it every time.
“Junk journaling was the first time where it was like, I can be a part of that club,” she stated, and it felt pure to her to increase that invitation to others.
Nandi Owolo based Junk Journal Membership in August 2024.
(Kayla Otero / Junk Journal Membership)
Early on, Owolo envisioned her junk journaling membership would encompass a dozen or so individuals gathering every month to journal collectively, and that was sufficient for her. However phrase bought out, the demand was there, and earlier than she knew it, Junk Journal Membership was a full-blown enterprise.
“I don’t think I ever saw it becoming what it is today,” Owolo stated.
As of late, the previous leisure government collaborates with native artists and life-style manufacturers to placed on Junk Journal Membership occasions, which draw attendees from so far as Fresno and often promote out inside minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo prices round $35 on common per ticket, simply sufficient to interrupt even.
On high of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Membership additionally boasts a Discord neighborhood, which Owolo calls its “virtual town square,” of practically 1,700 members from throughout the globe. There, membership associates swap journaling suggestions, share their very own spreads and coordinate regional junk journaling meetups.
Junk Journal Membership members agreed that L.A. is a notoriously troublesome place to make significant grownup friendships as a result of individuals dwell thus far aside and don’t work together a lot with these exterior of their circles.
However attending membership meetups has made befriending strangers straightforward, they stated.
Izik Vu, 25, of Gardena has weekly junk journaling dates with different Junk Journal Membership members who dwell within the South Bay. El Segundo native Adrianna Dreckmann, 25, who struggled to rebuild her social life in L.A. after attending school within the Midwest, went to an Oasis live performance earlier this month with somebody she met at a February membership meetup.
“As you get older, you’re no longer in those isolated bubbles of college clubs and classes and stuff like that,” Dreckmann stated. “So you kind of just have to make them yourself.”
Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based proprietor of Lalgan stickers and junk journal provides, gained considered one of her closest associates by means of sponsoring a Junk Journal Membership occasion.
“It was just that kind of instantaneous connection,” Dekermenjian stated. “I feel like I have known her my entire life.”
As somebody who traditionally had a small circle and struggled to make associates as an grownup, Dekermenjian stated, “I didn’t realize there’s this part of me that’s wanted this all along.”
Even for self-proclaimed introverts like Christa Hansen, 31, exhibiting as much as Junk Journal Membership meetups alone is manageable, as a result of everyone seems to be so pleasant.
“One thing that really helps people break the ice is a lot of times people are really generous with their supplies,” Hansen stated. “So people are just sharing things, exchanging things, showing pages of their journal, and then suddenly it doesn’t feel very scary to talk to them.”
Christa Hansen’s junk journal consists of three-dimensional components that lend it the standard of a youngsters’s pop-up guide.
(Christa Hansen)
Hansen went solo to the August Junk Journal Membership meetup, however inside an hour, she was fangirling with a pair of roomates — Paige Schaeffer, 27, and Millie Jones, 27 — whom she’d simply met, concerning the cult-favorite Nathalie Lété Sticker E-book and outstanding junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the “Craft Queen” by her followers.
“Wait, I would freak out if I got to meet her,” Schaeffer stated, gushing.
Calvi, 30, who lives in Sydney, would have laughed shyly. She by no means got down to be the world-famous junk-journaling influencer she’s change into.
She was only a “crafty girl,” who had bored with outdated Y2K sticker designs and determined to take issues into her personal palms, she stated in a latest interview with The Instances.
“I started out by making my own sticker sheet just at home, in my bedroom. And people wanted to buy it, but I never wanted to start a business,” Calvi stated. She listed only one sticker sheet, then just a few extra, and wound up with an internationally beloved junk journal provides model, Martina’s Tiny Retailer, whose merchandise are bought at City Outfitters areas all through the U.S. and Canada.
“A lot of my influences are like Rookie Mag, Tumblr, Sofia Coppola, all of that. But really, it’s my childhood and my teenhood, especially that I draw inspiration from,” Martina Calvi stated.
(Martina Calvi)
Final October, Calvi launched her guide “The Art of Memory Collecting,” which guides readers by means of 15 totally different craft initiatives to flex their artistic muscular tissues. The chapter on junk journaling resonated a lot that only a 12 months later she is ready to launch a guide fully devoted to the passion. (Hansen already preordered it.)
Calvi, who has completed 30-plus junk journals of her personal, believes it’s human nature to gather tidbits and tokens to make which means out of our on a regular basis lives, that everybody has a field underneath the mattress or a shelf within the closet spilling over with ephemera. However as for this “crafty renaissance,” she stated she’s seeing among the many youthful generations, there are elements apart from pure nostalgia at play.
“It’s definitely linked to what’s happening at the moment, I think, with the rise of AI and living in such a digital era,” Calvi stated. “I think it’s only natural that we feel pulled in the other direction, almost like we’re finding comfort in the tangible and handmade — that’s familiar.”
On high of that, craft golf equipment are a low-cost strategy to socialize that doesn’t contain ingesting, one thing loads of younger individuals are searching for in a time when residing prices are excessive, she stated.
Kalli LeVasseur, 33, considered one of Owolo’s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, noticed an analogous craving amongst her friends in Chicago for a way of neighborhood that didn’t revolve round ingesting or being glued to a display screen. It’s an enormous cause she and good friend Cheyenne Livelsberger began Chicago’s Cool Youngsters Craft Membership, she instructed The Instances in a latest interview.
One other motive, LeVasseur stated, was extra private. In 2023, LeVasseur misplaced her grandmother unexpectedly. Across the similar time, her brother turned very sick, and her father was recognized with most cancers.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t think I can handle one more thing,’” LeVasseur stated, including that she instructed herself, “I need something healthy to do as I’m moving through this grief.”
LeVasseur’s grandmother was a quilter, and her mom a scrapbooker, so crafting, to her, was in her “lineage.” However she struggled to decide to any specific apply, at all times feeling that they have been too demanding or restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi’s content material.
“I Instacarted from Michaels one night the actual journal that I got for the first time, and literally from that moment, I haven’t stopped,” she stated.
Kalli LeVasseur’s journal pages vary from curated, sticker-laden spreads to what she referred to as “junk dumps.”
(Kalli LeVasseur)
By junk journaling, LeVasseur got here again to herself, and bought again into the world, she stated. It’s counterintuitive, given crafting is mostly understood to be a solitary, home-based exercise. However to fill your journal, it’s a must to go locations.
“It feels so corny, but truly, it has changed my life,” LeVasseur stated, her voice breaking.
“Obviously, there was the grief piece of it,” she stated. “But in adulthood, especially now that I’m in my 30s and jobs are more demanding, having time to create and play with no pressure and making that part of my routine has genuinely made my life much happier.”
Owolo’s Junk Journal Membership guestbook, which lay inconspicuously among the many celebration favors on the August gathering in Glendale, was crammed with many such expressions of pleasure and gratitude.
“Thank you so much for creating a space for us all to get creative and get out the house,” one signee wrote within the guestbook. “This is my second meetup, and it’s hard to leave without a smile on my face.”
Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Membership attendees to signal the visitor guide at her membership meetups.
(Malia Mendez / Los Angeles Instances)
“I loved sharing this space with you,” one other echoed.
Typically Owolo reads the messages late at night time in a Canter’s sales space in Beverly Grove and simply cries, she stated.
Perhaps she’d make a cease later that night time. However for now, she had a celebration to throw.
