Bikini-clad girls sat sipping canned cocktails by the shallow end of a swimming pool. Their sunscreen glistened in the summer heat, leaving a coconut aroma in the air.
But these sunbathers weren’t here to tan. They were here for a junk journaling party.
Junk journaling, yet another marker of younger generations’ continued reversion to physical media, is a catch-all term for a craft practice that incorporates scrapbooking, collaging and journaling. While its charm lies in its refusal of precise definition, junk journaling generally consists of compiling scrap items and keepsakes into curated notebooks, which can also contain personal musings, ornamental stickers and other embellishments.
Nicolette Smith, left, and Elizabeth Nelson fill their journals at the Aug. 23 Junk Journal Club party in Glendale.
(Kayla Otero)
Junk journals read like the rowdy daughters of the 2000s-era scrapbooks. While sharing their memory-keeping mothers’ pasted pages and nostalgic ethos, these journals have broken family tradition with their messy aesthetic and preference for oft-discarded objects. Tags, receipts, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, even junk mail — they’re all gold for a junk journal.
“People say somebody’s trash is somebody’s treasure,” said Olivia Jones, 36, an Irvine resident and owner of small stationery business Pink Coast Studio. “That’s No. 1 for us junk journalers.”
In the last year, junk journaling has skyrocketed in popularity as influencers within the hobby‘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 Club, tagged “the original junk journal club,” served as a blueprint for many of those organizations. In late August, more than 50 crafters celebrated the club’s first birthday at a Glendale pool party. (More would have come, but the rented venue capped attendance.)
They sprawled around the rim of the backyard swimming pool and across the adjacent lawn, their animal-print blankets and beach towels crowded with paper scraps and glue sticks. Veteran journalers refilled matching Fujifilm photo printers, while newbies leafed through fresh sticker books. Once unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the supplies lay like a potluck spread, free for the taking.
“Whenever I buy stickers for myself, it’s kind of excessive,” said attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to attend the meetup. “But I brought them to share as well.”
Huang’s journal pages, filled with receipts, photos and food packaging, chronicle her travels and daily adventures. Sometimes, she sits her friends down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell style, she said.
“It’s like real-life Instagram,” she said, laughing.
A spread from Sophia Huang’s junk journal, featuring mementos from a visit to the Orange County Museum of Art.
(Sophia Huang)
It was nearly 100 degrees outside in Glendale, but Huang and her fellow party attendees stayed at the Junk Journal Club soiree for hours anyway — blissfully ignoring the sweat melting the makeup off their smiling faces.
Club founder Nandi Owolo, 30, watched the revelry from a secluded lounge chair, sitting for the first time all day, and marveled at what her little club had become.
Owolo, an Echo Park resident, started Junk Journal Club just a few months after she herself got into the hobby last year. She began dabbling after a foot injury left her homebound, and she was thrilled to finally find 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 said. “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 said, and it felt natural to her to extend that invitation to others.
Nandi Owolo founded Junk Journal Club in August 2024.
(Kayla Otero / Junk Journal Club)
Early on, Owolo envisioned her junk journaling club would consist of a dozen or so people gathering each month to journal together, and that was enough for her. But word got out, the demand was there, and before she knew it, Junk Journal Club was a full-blown business.
“I don’t think I ever saw it becoming what it is today,” Owolo said.
These days, the former entertainment executive collaborates with local artists and lifestyle brands to put on Junk Journal Club events, which draw attendees from as far as Fresno and regularly sell out within minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo charges around $35 on average per ticket, just enough to break even.
On top of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Club also boasts a Discord community, which Owolo calls its “virtual town square,” of nearly 1,700 members from across the globe. There, club affiliates swap journaling tips, share their own spreads and coordinate regional junk journaling meetups.
Junk Journal Club members agreed that L.A. is a notoriously difficult place to make meaningful adult friendships because people live so far apart and don’t interact much with those outside of their circles.
But attending club meetups has made befriending strangers easy, they said.
Izik Vu, 25, of Gardena has weekly junk journaling dates with other Junk Journal Club members who live in the South Bay. El Segundo native Adrianna Dreckmann, 25, who struggled to rebuild her social life in L.A. after attending college in the Midwest, went to an Oasis concert earlier this month with someone she met at a February club meetup.
“As you get older, you’re no longer in those isolated bubbles of college clubs and classes and stuff like that,” Dreckmann said. “So you kind of just have to make them yourself.”
Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based owner of Lalgan stickers and junk journal supplies, gained one of her closest friends through sponsoring a Junk Journal Club event.
“It was just that kind of instantaneous connection,” Dekermenjian said. “I feel like I have known her my entire life.”
As someone who historically had a small circle and struggled to make friends as an adult, Dekermenjian said, “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, showing up to Junk Journal Club meetups alone is manageable, because everyone is so friendly.
“One thing that really helps people break the ice is a lot of times people are really generous with their supplies,” Hansen said. “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 includes three-dimensional elements that lend it the quality of a children’s pop-up book.
(Christa Hansen)
Hansen went solo to the August Junk Journal Club meetup, but within an hour, she was fangirling with a pair of roomates — Paige Schaeffer, 27, and Millie Jones, 27 — whom she’d just met, about the cult-favorite Nathalie Lété Sticker Book and prominent junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the “Craft Queen” by her followers.
“Wait, I would freak out if I got to meet her,” Schaeffer said, gushing.
Calvi, 30, who lives in Sydney, would have laughed shyly. She never set out to be the world-famous junk-journaling influencer she’s become.
She was just a “crafty girl,” who had tired of outdated Y2K sticker designs and decided to take matters into her own hands, she said in a recent interview with The Times.
“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 said. She listed just one sticker sheet, then a few more, and wound up with an internationally beloved junk journal supplies brand, Martina’s Tiny Store, whose products are sold at Urban Outfitters locations throughout 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 said.
(Martina Calvi)
Last October, Calvi released her book “The Art of Memory Collecting,” which guides readers through 15 different craft projects to flex their creative muscles. The chapter on junk journaling resonated so much that just a year later she is set to release a book entirely dedicated to the hobby. (Hansen already preordered it.)
Calvi, who has finished 30-plus junk journals of her own, believes it’s human nature to collect tidbits and tokens to make meaning out of our everyday lives, that everyone has a box under the bed or a shelf in the closet spilling over with ephemera. But as for this “crafty renaissance,” she said she’s seeing among the younger generations, there are factors other than 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 said. “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 top of that, craft clubs are a low-cost way to socialize that doesn’t involve drinking, something a lot of young people are looking for in a time when living costs are high, she said.
Kalli LeVasseur, 33, one of Owolo’s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, saw a similar craving among her peers in Chicago for a sense of community that didn’t revolve around drinking or being glued to a screen. It’s a huge reason she and friend Cheyenne Livelsberger started Chicago’s Cool Kids Craft Club, she told The Times in a recent interview.
Another motive, LeVasseur said, was more personal. In 2023, LeVasseur lost her grandmother unexpectedly. Around the same time, her brother became very sick, and her father was diagnosed with cancer.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t think I can handle one more thing,’” LeVasseur said, adding that she told herself, “I need something healthy to do as I’m moving through this grief.”
LeVasseur’s grandmother was a quilter, and her mother a scrapbooker, so crafting, to her, was in her “lineage.” But she struggled to commit to any particular practice, always feeling that they were too demanding or restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi’s content.
“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 said.
Kalli LeVasseur’s journal pages range from curated, sticker-laden spreads to what she called “junk dumps.”
(Kalli LeVasseur)
Through junk journaling, LeVasseur came back to herself, and got back into the world, she said. It’s counterintuitive, given crafting is generally understood to be a solitary, home-based activity. But to fill your journal, you have to go places.
“It feels so corny, but truly, it has changed my life,” LeVasseur said, her voice breaking.
“Obviously, there was the grief piece of it,” she said. “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 Club guestbook, which lay inconspicuously among the party favors at the August gathering in Glendale, was filled with many such expressions of joy and gratitude.
“Thank you so much for creating a space for us all to get creative and get out the house,” one signee wrote in the guestbook. “This is my second meetup, and it’s hard to leave without a smile on my face.”
Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Club attendees to sign the guest book at her club meetups.
(Malia Mendez / Los Angeles Times)
“I loved sharing this space with you,” another echoed.
Sometimes Owolo reads the messages late at night in a Canter’s booth in Beverly Grove and just cries, she said.
Maybe she’d make a stop later that night. But for now, she had a party to throw.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
