Bikini-clad ladies 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, yet 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 gadgets and keepsakes into curated notebooks, which may additionally include private musings, decorative stickers and different gildings.
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.
“Folks say any person’s trash is any person’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 yr, junk journaling has skyrocketed in reputation as influencers throughout the pastime‘s group have recruited new crafters on social media, particularly from TikTok. On the similar time, in-person junk journaling golf equipment have cropped up throughout the nation, turning the historically solo pastime right into a social scene.
L.A.’s Junk Journal Membership, tagged “the unique junk journal membership,” 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 recent sticker books. As soon as unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the provides lay like a potluck unfold, free for the taking.
“Every time I purchase stickers for myself, it’s type of extreme,” stated attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to attend the meetup. “However I introduced them to share as nicely.”
Huang’s journal pages, full of receipts, photographs and meals packaging, chronicle her travels and each day adventures. Typically, she sits her pals down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell type, she stated.
“It’s like real-life Instagram,” she stated, laughing.
A ramification 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 outdoors 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 turn out to be.
Owolo, an Echo Park resident, began Junk Journal Membership only a few months after she herself bought into the pastime final yr. She started dabbling after a foot harm left her homebound, and he or she was thrilled to lastly discover a craft that felt accessible to her.
“I attempted so many crafts. I can’t paint, can’t draw. I attempted doing the embroidery hoops and the crocheting of little animals,” Owolo stated. “I attempted all of it, failed at it each time.
“Junk journaling was the primary time the place it was like, I will be part of that membership,” 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 include 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 assume I ever noticed it turning into what it’s right now,” Owolo stated.
As of late, the previous leisure govt collaborates with native artists and life-style manufacturers to placed on Junk Journal Membership occasions, which draw attendees from so far as Fresno and frequently promote out inside minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo fees round $35 on common per ticket, simply sufficient to interrupt even.
On prime of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Membership additionally boasts a Discord group, which Owolo calls its “digital city sq.,” 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 tough place to make significant grownup friendships as a result of individuals stay up to now aside and don’t work together a lot with these outdoors 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 stay 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 become older, you’re now not in these remoted bubbles of school golf equipment and lessons and stuff like that,” Dreckmann stated. “So that you type of simply must make them your self.”
Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based proprietor of Lalgan stickers and junk journal provides, gained one among her closest pals by sponsoring a Junk Journal Membership occasion.
“It was simply that type of instantaneous connection,” Dekermenjian stated. “I really feel like I’ve recognized her my total life.”
As somebody who traditionally had a small circle and struggled to make pals as an grownup, Dekermenjian stated, “I didn’t notice there’s this a part of me that’s needed this all alongside.”
Even for self-proclaimed introverts like Christa Hansen, 31, displaying as much as Junk Journal Membership meetups alone is manageable, as a result of everyone seems to be so pleasant.
“One factor that actually helps individuals break the ice is a variety of instances persons are actually beneficiant with their provides,” Hansen stated. “So persons are simply sharing issues, exchanging issues, displaying pages of their journal, after which all of the sudden it doesn’t really feel very scary to speak to them.”
Christa Hansen’s junk journal consists of three-dimensional components that lend it the standard of a youngsters’s pop-up ebook.
(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 Guide and outstanding junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the “Craft Queen” by her followers.
“Wait, I might freak out if I bought to satisfy 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 turn out to be.
She was only a “artful lady,” who had uninterested in outdated Y2K sticker designs and determined to take issues into her personal arms, she stated in a latest interview with The Instances.
“I began out by making my very own sticker sheet simply at house, in my bed room. And other people needed to purchase it, however I by no means needed to begin a enterprise,” Calvi stated. She listed only one sticker sheet, then a couple of 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.
“Plenty of my influences are like Rookie Magazine, Tumblr, Sofia Coppola, all of that. However actually, it’s my childhood and my teenhood, particularly that I draw inspiration from,” Martina Calvi stated.
(Martina Calvi)
Final October, Calvi launched her ebook “The Artwork of Reminiscence Gathering,” which guides readers by 15 totally different craft initiatives to flex their inventive muscular tissues. The chapter on junk journaling resonated a lot that only a yr later she is ready to launch a ebook fully devoted to the pastime. (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 below the mattress or a shelf within the closet spilling over with ephemera. However as for this “artful renaissance,” she stated she’s seeing among the many youthful generations, there are components aside from pure nostalgia at play.
“It’s undoubtedly linked to what’s occurring in the meanwhile, I feel, with the rise of AI and dwelling in such a digital period,” Calvi stated. “I feel it’s solely pure that we really feel pulled within the different path, nearly like we’re discovering consolation within the tangible and handmade — that’s acquainted.”
On prime of that, craft golf equipment are a low-cost method to socialize that doesn’t contain consuming, one thing a variety of younger persons are on the lookout for in a time when dwelling prices are excessive, she stated.
Kalli LeVasseur, 33, one among Owolo’s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, noticed an analogous craving amongst her friends in Chicago for a way of group that didn’t revolve round consuming or being glued to a display. It’s an enormous purpose she and good friend Cheyenne Livelsberger began Chicago’s Cool Children Craft Membership, she informed 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 identified with most cancers.
“I used to be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t assume I can deal with yet another factor,’” LeVasseur stated, including that she informed herself, “I would like one thing wholesome to do as I’m shifting by 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 explicit apply, all the time feeling that they have been too demanding or restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi’s content material.
“I Instacarted from Michaels one night time the precise journal that I bought for the primary time, and actually from that second, 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 means of junk journaling, LeVasseur got here again to herself, and bought again into the world, she stated. It’s counterintuitive, given crafting is usually understood to be a solitary, home-based exercise. However to fill your journal, it’s important to go locations.
“It feels so corny, however actually, it has modified my life,” LeVasseur stated, her voice breaking.
“Clearly, there was the grief piece of it,” she stated. “However in maturity, particularly now that I’m in my 30s and jobs are extra demanding, having time to create and play with no strain and making that a part of my routine has genuinely made my life a lot happier.”
Owolo’s Junk Journal Membership guestbook, which lay inconspicuously among the many celebration favors on the August gathering in Glendale, was full of many such expressions of pleasure and gratitude.
“Thanks a lot for creating an area for us all to get inventive and get out the home,” one signee wrote within the guestbook. “That is my second meetup, and it’s arduous to go away and not using a smile on my face.”
Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Membership attendees to signal the visitor ebook at her membership meetups.
(Malia Mendez / Los Angeles Instances)
“I cherished sharing this area 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.
