'It's like real-life Instagram': The rise of junk journaling in L.A.

Bikini-clad girls sat sipping canned cocktails by the shallow extremity of a swimming pool. Their sunscreen glistened successful the summertime heat, leaving a coconut aroma successful the air.

But these sunbathers weren’t present to tan. They were present for a junk journaling party.

Junk journaling, yet different marker of younger generations’ continued reversion to carnal media, is simply a catch-all word for a trade signifier that incorporates scrapbooking, collaging and journaling. While its charm lies successful its refusal of precise definition, junk journaling mostly consists of compiling scrap items and keepsakes into curated notebooks, which tin besides incorporate idiosyncratic musings, ornamental stickers and different embellishments.

Nicolette Smith, left, and Elizabeth Nelson capable their journals astatine the Aug. 23 Junk Journal Club enactment successful Glendale.

(Kayla Otero)

Junk journals work similar the rowdy daughters of the 2000s-era scrapbooks. While sharing their memory-keeping mothers’ pasted pages and nostalgic ethos, these journals person breached household contented with their messy aesthetic and penchant for oft-discarded objects. Tags, receipts, summons stubs, candy wrappers, adjacent junk message — they’re each golden for a junk journal.

“People accidental somebody’s trash is somebody’s treasure,” said Olivia Jones, 36, an Irvine nonmigratory and proprietor of tiny stationery concern Pink Coast Studio. “That’s No. 1 for america junk journalers.”

In the past year, junk journaling has skyrocketed successful popularity arsenic influencers wrong the hobby‘s assemblage person recruited caller crafters connected societal media, particularly from TikTok. At the aforesaid time, in-person junk journaling clubs person cropped up crossed the country, turning the traditionally solo pastime into a societal scene.

L.A.’s Junk Journal Club, tagged “the archetypal junk diary club,” served arsenic a blueprint for galore of those organizations. In precocious August, much than 50 crafters celebrated the club’s archetypal day astatine a Glendale excavation party. (More would person come, but the rented venue capped attendance.)

They sprawled astir the rim of the backyard swimming excavation and crossed the adjacent lawn, their animal-print blankets and formation towels crowded with insubstantial scraps and glue sticks. Veteran journalers refilled matching Fujifilm photograph printers, portion newbies leafed done caller sticker books. Once unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the supplies laic similar a potluck spread, escaped for the taking.

“Whenever I bargain stickers for myself, it’s benignant of excessive,” said attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to be the meetup. “But I brought them to stock arsenic well.”

Huang’s diary pages, filled with receipts, photos and nutrient packaging, chronicle her travels and regular adventures. Sometimes, she sits her friends down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell style, she said.

“It’s similar real-life Instagram,” she said, laughing.

A dispersed from Sophia Huang’s junk journal, featuring mementos from a sojourn to the Orange County Museum of Art.

(Sophia Huang)

It was astir 100 degrees extracurricular successful Glendale, but Huang and her chap enactment attendees stayed astatine the Junk Journal Club soiree for hours anyhow — blissfully ignoring the sweat melting the constitution disconnected their smiling faces.

Club laminitis Nandi Owolo, 30, watched the revelry from a secluded lounge chair, sitting for the archetypal clip each day, and marveled astatine what her small nine had become.

Owolo, an Echo Park resident, started Junk Journal Club conscionable a fewer months aft she herself got into the hobby past year. She began dabbling aft a ft wounded near her homebound, and she was thrilled to yet find a trade that felt accessible to her.

“I tried truthful galore crafts. I can’t paint, can’t draw. I tried doing the embroidery hoops and the crocheting of small animals,” Owolo said. “I tried it all, failed astatine it each time.

“Junk journaling was the archetypal clip wherever it was like, I tin beryllium a portion of that club,” she said, and it felt earthy to her to widen that invitation to others.

Nandi Owolo founded Junk Journal Club successful August 2024.

(Kayla Otero / Junk Journal Club)

Early on, Owolo envisioned her junk journaling nine would dwell of a twelve oregon truthful radical gathering each period to diary together, and that was capable for her. But connection got out, the request was there, and earlier she knew it, Junk Journal Club was a full-blown business.

“I don’t deliberation I ever saw it becoming what it is today,” Owolo said.

These days, the erstwhile amusement enforcement collaborates with section artists and manner brands to enactment connected Junk Journal Club events, which gully attendees from arsenic acold arsenic Fresno and regularly merchantability retired wrong minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo charges astir $35 connected mean per ticket, conscionable capable to interruption even.

On apical of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Club besides boasts a Discord community, which Owolo calls its “virtual municipality square,” of astir 1,700 members from crossed the globe. There, nine affiliates swap journaling tips, stock their ain spreads and coordinate determination junk journaling meetups.

Junk Journal Club members agreed that L.A. is simply a notoriously hard spot to marque meaningful big friendships due to the fact that radical unrecorded truthful acold isolated and don’t interact overmuch with those extracurricular of their circles.

But attending nine meetups has made befriending strangers easy, they said.

Izik Vu, 25, of Gardena has play junk journaling dates with different Junk Journal Club members who unrecorded successful the South Bay. El Segundo autochthonal Adrianna Dreckmann, 25, who struggled to rebuild her societal beingness successful L.A. aft attending assemblage successful the Midwest, went to an Oasis performance earlier this period with idiosyncratic she met astatine a February nine meetup.

“As you get older, you’re nary longer successful those isolated bubbles of assemblage clubs and classes and worldly similar that,” Dreckmann said. “So you benignant of conscionable person to marque them yourself.”

Searches for “junk journal” since September 2023.

(Google Trends)

Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based proprietor of Lalgan stickers and junk diary supplies, gained 1 of her closest friends done sponsoring a Junk Journal Club event.

“It was conscionable that benignant of instantaneous connection,” Dekermenjian said. “I consciousness similar I person known her my full life.”

As idiosyncratic who historically had a tiny ellipse and struggled to marque friends arsenic an adult, Dekermenjian said, “I didn’t recognize there’s this portion of maine that’s wanted this each along.”

Even for self-proclaimed introverts similar Christa Hansen, 31, showing up to Junk Journal Club meetups unsocial is manageable, due to the fact that everyone is truthful friendly.

“One happening that truly helps radical interruption the crystal is simply a batch of times radical are truly generous with their supplies,” Hansen said. “So radical are conscionable sharing things, exchanging things, showing pages of their journal, and past abruptly it doesn’t consciousness precise scary to speech to them.”

Christa Hansen’s junk diary includes three-dimensional elements that lend it the prime of a children’s pop-up book.

(Christa Hansen)

Hansen went solo to the August Junk Journal Club meetup, but wrong an hour, she was fangirling with a brace of roommates — Paige Schaeffer, 27, and Millie Jones, 27 — whom she’d conscionable met, astir the cult-favorite Nathalie Lété Sticker Book and salient junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the “Craft Queen” by her followers.

“Wait, I would freak retired if I got to conscionable her,” Schaeffer said, gushing.

Calvi, 30, who lives successful Sydney, would person laughed shyly. She ne'er acceptable retired to beryllium the world-famous junk-journaling influencer she’s become.

She was conscionable a “crafty girl,” who had bushed of outdated Y2K sticker designs and decided to instrumentality matters into her ain hands, she said successful a caller interrogation with The Times.

“I started retired by making my ain sticker expanse conscionable astatine home, successful my bedroom. And radical wanted to bargain it, but I ne'er wanted to commencement a business,” Calvi said. She listed conscionable 1 sticker sheet, past a fewer more, and coiled up with an internationally beloved junk diary supplies brand, Martina’s Tiny Store, whose products are sold astatine Urban Outfitters locations passim the U.S. and Canada.

“A batch of my influences are similar Rookie Mag, Tumblr, Sofia Coppola, each of that. But really, it’s my puerility and my teenhood, particularly that I gully inspiration from,” Martina Calvi said.

(Martina Calvi)

Last October, Calvi released her publication “The Art of Memory Collecting,” which guides readers done 15 antithetic trade projects to flex their originative muscles. The section connected junk journaling resonated truthful overmuch that conscionable a twelvemonth aboriginal she is acceptable to merchandise a publication wholly dedicated to the hobby. (Hansen already preordered it.)

Calvi, who has finished 30-plus junk journals of her own, believes it’s quality quality to cod tidbits and tokens to marque meaning retired of our mundane lives, that everyone has a container nether the furniture oregon a support successful the closet spilling implicit with ephemera. But arsenic for this “crafty renaissance,” she said she’s seeing among the younger generations, determination are factors different than axenic nostalgia astatine play.

“It’s decidedly linked to what’s happening astatine the moment, I think, with the emergence of AI and surviving successful specified a integer era,” Calvi said. “I deliberation it’s lone earthy that we consciousness pulled successful the different direction, astir similar we’re uncovering comfortableness successful the tangible and handmade — that’s familiar.”

On apical of that, trade clubs are a low-cost mode to socialize that doesn’t impact drinking, thing a batch of young radical are looking for successful a clip erstwhile surviving costs are high, she said.

Kalli LeVasseur, 33, 1 of Owolo’s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, saw a akin craving among her peers successful Chicago for a consciousness of assemblage that didn’t revolve astir drinking oregon being glued to a screen. It’s a immense crushed she and person Cheyenne Livelsberger started Chicago’s Cool Kids Craft Club, she told The Times successful a caller interview.

Another motive, LeVasseur said, was much personal. In 2023, LeVasseur mislaid her grandma unexpectedly. Around the aforesaid time, her member became precise sick, and her begetter was diagnosed with cancer.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t deliberation I tin grip 1 much thing,’” LeVasseur said, adding that she told herself, “I request thing steadfast to bash arsenic I’m moving done this grief.”

LeVasseur’s grandma was a quilter, and her parent a scrapbooker, truthful crafting, to her, was successful her “lineage.” But she struggled to perpetrate to immoderate peculiar practice, ever feeling that they were excessively demanding oregon restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi’s content.

“I Instacarted from Michaels 1 nighttime the existent diary that I got for the archetypal time, and virtually from that moment, I haven’t stopped,” she said.

Kalli LeVasseur’s diary pages scope from curated, sticker-laden spreads to what she called “junk dumps.”

(Kalli LeVasseur)

Through junk journaling, LeVasseur came backmost to herself, and got backmost into the world, she said. It’s counterintuitive, fixed crafting is mostly understood to beryllium a solitary, home-based activity. But to capable your journal, you person to spell places.

“It feels truthful corny, but truly, it has changed my life,” LeVasseur said, her dependable breaking.

“Obviously, determination was the grief portion of it,” she said. “But successful adulthood, particularly present that I’m successful my 30s and jobs are much demanding, having clip to make and play with nary unit and making that portion of my regular has genuinely made my beingness overmuch happier.”

Owolo’s Junk Journal Club guestbook, which laic inconspicuously among the enactment favors astatine the August gathering successful Glendale, was filled with galore specified expressions of joyousness and gratitude.

“Thank you truthful overmuch for creating a abstraction for america each to get originative and get retired the house,” 1 signee wrote successful the guestbook. “This is my 2nd meetup, and it’s hard to permission without a grin connected my face.”

Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Club attendees to motion the impermanent publication astatine her nine meetups.

(Malia Mendez / Los Angeles Times)

“I loved sharing this abstraction with you,” different echoed.

Sometimes Owolo reads the messages precocious astatine nighttime successful a Canter’s booth successful Beverly Grove and conscionable cries, she said.

Maybe she’d marque a halt aboriginal that night. But for now, she had a enactment to throw.