BY AMANDA MACHAMER
FOR THE OBSERVER
AUBURN — Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers, in collaboration with Sticker and Stamp, held their monthly junk journaling night on May 28 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The event aimed to bring creative minds together for a night of connection and stress-free journal decoration.
Junk journaling is a form of art that reuses everyday materials to create a completely handmade journal.
Unlike scrapbooking or journaling, junk journaling does not use any materials bought firsthand and typically includes things like old receipts or event tickets.
Guests were encouraged to supply their own journals for the event, allowing them to continue to add to them in their own time. However, journals were available for sale if a guest did not have one.
Sticker and Stamp, a local art supply store based in Columbus, Georgia, hosted the event with Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers. The art store supplied guests with exclusively second-hand “junk” to add to their journals, including tape, hole punchers, markers and stickers.
Olivia Fortson, co-owner of Sticker and Stamp, said the concept behind junk journaling night started through a casual hobby with fellow owner Sierra Wells.
“We caught wind of it,” said Fortson. “We were craft hoppers, so we decided to give it a try, and we fell in love with it.”
Fortson said their love for junk journaling inspired them to bring that experience to others in the area. Starting from casual junk journal club meetups to the now monthly events at Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers, Fortson said the impact on the community speaks for itself.
“There are people here that come every month, and they know each other, I know them and they know me,” Fortson said. “We have new faces every month, but we also have those people that when we drop the dates, it’s on their calendar.”
Junk journaling is what Fortson considers “the coolest form of memory keeping,” and that it’s “scrapbooking without all of the rules.”
Fortson said the event specifically supplies ephemera items, which are paper goods that have been reclaimed. An item cannot be considered ephemera until it is reused for something like junk journaling.
Cierra Fountain is a returning guest of junk journaling night and said she has been hooked, not just because of the artwork, but the community as well.
“We went to our first scrap and yap a few months ago and have been hooked ever since, because it’s awesome,” said Fountain. “You build community here, you get to have the time of your life and talk to people.”
Fountain said her strategy for junk journaling is through her reading journal, which combines reading with scrapbooking.
“You get to literally just envision it,” Fountain said. “So pulling from the pages onto my scrapbook, it was so fun because it’s literally all my imagination.”
The next junk journaling night will be held on July 23 at Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers.
