Junk Journaling & Memory Keeping

In today’s post I’m sharing how I combined my love of junk journaling and memory keeping to document our recent road trip to Jasper & Canmore.

My husband and I went on a little road trip back in November and I knew that I wanted to create my own album using some of my thrifted finds and memorabilia from the trip. So before we left I pulled out some supplies to use as the base pages.

The base pages are made up of: the cover of a how to paint book; a journal page from 1964; some scrapbook paper; a sheet of music paper; grid paper; a map of the Jasper National Park and a printed paper bag.

I put them in order, folded and trimmed them but didn’t stitch them together until the album was complete. This allowed me to do some journaling and plan the photos I wanted to print while we were away.

I filmed a video if you’d like to see the entire album.

Let’s Take a Closer Look…

I included a bit of stamping throughout the album. The trees and the stag are from the Outdoor Adventure stamp set. I love the texture on these stamps. The ‘Get Away’ is an acrylic piece from my stash – it’s from Color Cast Designs.

There’s a lot of journaling in this album, some of which is hidden. I have a tag tucked behind the photo of my husband and I. And more journaling behind the tag on the right page.

If you watch the video I linked above you can see that I included a lot of memorabilia in the album. Junk journaling has really taught me to look at things with a new eye. I love trying to include as much as I can in my journals and don’t throw anything away until I know I’m done with it.

More Details

If you have been a Stampin’ Up! customer for awhile, you might recognize the numbered paper on the right side. The tag on the left was created using a scrap of dsp from the Country Woods paper pack.

When I packed my supplies to bring with me, I wanted to keep them to a minimum. I packed a ruler, black pen, glue stick, scissors and scraps of paper. I didn’t bring any of the stamps or inks. That was something I added when I got home and after I printed my photos.

While on our trip, I made a point of picking up a few things to add to my album – a map, postcard, sticker and bookmark. But I also kept other things – like the envelope that our hotel keys were in, receipts, business cards, tags from things I purchased and a coffee cup sleeve. These made perfect additions to my album.

On the spread above I added adhesive to the right and bottom of the month/day card to create a pocket that holds a couple business cards and some more journaling.

To give a more aged look, I inked around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Oxide but you could get a similar look with some pecan pie ink. Because I didn’t bring a paper cutter, all the edges are torn using a ruler. Except for the things I did when I was back at home.

There are so many interactive pieces to this album. I had to get creative because I had so many photos and journaling to include. On this page the tab with the word ‘exploring’ opens to the right to reveal more journaling.

I’m so happy that I’ve found a way to combine my love of junk journaling and memory keeping! I’ll definitely do something similar to this for our next trip in March.

Until next time,

Product List

The items below are the current (as of writing this post) Stampin’ Up! supplies that I used. In addition to these I also used several thrifted items and things from my stash.