A guide to journals and scrapbooks

If you’re looking to get into journaling or scrapbooking, you came to the right place. This blog post will be going into starting you up.

Around 4-5 years ago, I started my first scrapbook. I always thought the layouts needed to be perfect, the perfect layout, the neatest handwriting, the most organised placement of tape, paper and photos. Then I realised I had more fun taking the organisation out of it, and just throwing my memories onto a page. I found in doing this, it felt like the distraction I wanted, I could easily switch off. 
That’s not to say that having organisation in your scrapbooks is a bad thing, it’s your scrapbook to do however you please. 
Recently, on TikTok, my algorithm has started showing more journaling content, and while watching this content, I realised that journaling isn’t so different from scrapbooking. It’s the same sort of concept, but with a notebook instead of a bigger plain paged book. 

So when starting, what things do you need? I started out with this simple list:

1. An empty sketchbook (or notebook). I got mine from the works in the UK for £6, but if you’re looking for a notebook, take a look at my products, I have notebooks with my own photography on the cover
2. Paper, you can use paper you find laying around the house, or you can buy/print patterned paper.
3. Glue
4. Pens, in any colour and type that you prefer
5. stickers and washi tape, these are optional, but great options if you want to add some colour to your page.
6. Photos, these are also optional, depending on how you plan out your pages. There are many ways to get photos, but I like to use free prints, as you can get 45 free photos a month, with only the cost of delivery

Like I mentioned before, the way you do your layouts, whether it’s organised or chaotic, it is completely up to you and what you feel comfortable with. If you ever feel unsure of where to start, Pinterest is a good place to find inspiration. A good thing to note is what sort of theme/style you want to go with. No two pages have to be the same theme, for example, a lot of the pages in my scrapbook follow the theme of the colours in the photos.

One of the things I also like to add is postcards, especially from places I’ve traveled. If you’d like to look into postcards for your own projects, feel free to take a look at ones I’ve got listed as ones to start with. They aren’t travel related, but are good for the themes of broken buildings, or nature.

I hope this post has helped in some way, and has gotten you on the path to starting your own journal or scrapbook.