Pinterest girls will know: scrapbooking, junk journaling, bullet journaling, and any form of physical crafty media are making a comeback as popular forms of creative expression.
In an effort to keep memories from becoming just a photo lost in an Instagram feed, many people, specifically young women, have returned to the time-consuming craft that scrapbooking can be.
“The first time I made a scrapbook was my junior year of high school,” junior Jacqueline Roth said. “I wanted to make a nice gift for my friend to show I really appreciated her, and I loved it, because it was so fun to figure out how to put things together in such a unique way that’s not a normal card or photo album since you can combine a whole bunch of different elements.”
Roth said she is finishing a scrapbook of high school memories and plans to make one to reflect her college years. To her, making the physical scrapbook is more important than just having photos on a phone to look back at.
“I always have loved physical copies of things and I think there’s something really special about seeing photos outside of a screen, and with a scrapbook, you can try and capture what the event was like, the different funny moments or quotes, or the overall ambiance of the whole experience with the pictures and paper and stickers that you can bring into it,” Roth said. “It adds a whole other level of appreciation for the event that you can look back and remember it and how it felt.”
Junior Kayla Mullins took her step into creative journaling with bullet journaling during the coronavirus shutdown and hopes to lean into another method of memorabilia collecting: junk journaling.
Bullet journaling involves creating a planner in which a crafter can include schedules, lists, calendars, and reminders, with the freedom to be as maximalist with designs and styles or as minimalistic as the creator wants. Junk journaling is similar, but this practice is much less structured, providing an outlet for the crafter to add any “junk” they want into a journal to document important moments in their lives.
“I’m very type A and love being organized and having my planner,” Mullins said. “Bullet journaling was such a fun way to make it pretty and be artistic about it, too. For junk journaling, I’m very sentimental, and I hate throwing things away, so I think it would be super fun to have a diary, but of my semester with receipts and concert tickets, and things like that. I save everything I can.”
Scrapbooking and junk journaling provide a creative outlet that can be as structured or randomized as the creator wants and can be an outlet to preserve little scraps of memories. Mullins keeps confetti from a Forrest Frank concert she attended in the back of her phone case in hopes of adding it to her junk journal someday.
Junior Elizabeth Schlueter said she made a scrapbook this summer for the first time to remember her study abroad experience in a way that seemed more special than just looking at the photos on her phone.
“Scrapbooks enable us to relive beautiful moments in a beautifully rich way that social media simply cannot compare,” Schlueter said. “As I was going through my photos from Rome and Poland, I found myself reliving random moments with friends, encounters with God in prayer, and mundane moments that aren’t captured by merely looking at a picture on Instagram. I don’t know, there’s simply something about having the photos printed out that makes the memories come alive in a different way.”
Mullins said the fact that the spreads are physical adds to the importance of creating something like a scrapbook or junk journal.
“I just like the fact that it’s permanent,” Mullins said. “You can’t decide: I don’t like that picture anymore, I’m gonna go delete it. It’s a snapshot of your actual life at that point and what you enjoyed.”
Roth said scrapbooking and junk journaling are accessible to anyone with a desire for a creative outlet.
“I totally think anyone could pick this up,” Roth said. “The wonderful thing about scrapbooking is that it’s not a cookie-cutter way of doing something because everyone has some form of creative expression, and applies it in a way that is meaningful to them or their lives. They can just portray the way that event in their life was to them, living it on paper so that they can look back or show other people, and it’s kind of like a little snapshot into their life.”
Schlueter said the time commitment is worth the result and thinks everyone should try this hobby.
“Scrapbooking takes time, but that’s what makes it so meaningful,” Schlueter said. “It offers you an opportunity to dive back into an experience, relive and process it, and then create something beautiful that you can use to share and relive your experience with others. Plus, it’s also a lot of fun.”
