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Remember when tiny treasures used to rule our world? A friendship bracelet from camp, a sticker sheet that felt too perfect to use, the shell that made it home in your pocket.

Junk journaling is a way to bring that feeling back.

What started as a way to get off our phones and do something with our hands turned into so much more. Between gluing down a menu from our favorite retro diner and layering in photo booth strips, we began noticing the little things, romanticizing routines, and actually remembering moments instead of letting them fade.

If you’ve been looking for a reason to slow down and remind yourself that not everything needs to become content, this is it. The tiny treasures you save now will matter even more later.

✦ Martina Calvi:

Crafty queen of our dreams. Her book The Art of Memory Collecting basically broke our brains (in the best way) because now we see keepsakes everywhere. She calls them “tokens,” and once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. That candy wrapper you kept because you loved the font? Token. The boarding pass from your first solo trip? Also a token.

Oh, and she has a new book coming out in October called A Year of Junk Journaling, which we preordered immediately. 

✦ Tiny Store:

Martina’s own curated shop! She sells the cutest supplies, including washi tape, journals, patterned paper, random little embellishments, and yes, SO MANY STICKERS!

✦ Gather your scraps: Look for anything you didn’t want to throw away, but didn’t know where to put. Ticket stubs, printed photos, a random candy wrapper in your favorite color, a flyer you saved because you liked the font.

✦ Pick a theme or don’t: A full page of summer concert memories? Great. Total chaos and clippings? Also great. The only rule is that there are no rules.

✦ Layer it up: Glue. Tape. Color. Stack things. Scribble. Add texture. You can’t mess it up.

✦ Write something down: A date, a sentence, a quote from a friend. Anything to remind you why you saved that thing in the first place.

✦ Keep going: Flip the page when you have another memory to keep. You don’t need to journal every day. Let this be a place to pause whenever you feel like it.