Christmas is the one time of year a junk journal earns its keep - cards arrive, tags come off presents, receipts and wrapping scraps pile up, and all of it is worth keeping. Here is how to build a December journal that actually gets filled rather than started and abandoned.
Start it in November, not December
A blank journal on the 1st of December stays blank. Build the pages first - backgrounds, pockets, a few tags - while you have time. Then in December you are only adding, not making.
Give every spread one job
The journals that get finished have a structure. A simple one that works:
- A list spread - presents to buy, cards to send, food to order
- A pocket spread - for cards received, receipts, ticket stubs
- A tag spread - one tag per day, or one per person
- A photo spread - left empty until January
- A recipe spread - what you cooked, what worked
Five spreads is a real journal. Twenty blank ones is a chore.
Colour: pick three, not everything
Christmas ephemera gets loud fast. The vintage look comes from restraint. Three colours plus cream is plenty - for example cranberry red, pine green and aged gold. Anything bright or metallic reads as modern next to aged paper.
Where the material comes from
Half of it is free if you keep it: the card that came with a gift, a chocolate wrapper, a train ticket from a December trip, the tag off a tree. Keep an envelope in the kitchen from the 1st and put everything in it.
The other half is printed. What you actually need is small: a set of aged backgrounds, one sheet of cut-apart Christmas figures for the tags, and one sheet of festive ephemera for labels and tickets.
Do not glue everything down
The best Christmas spreads have loose pieces - cards tucked in pockets, tags on string, a folded list. You can add to them all month. A fully glued spread on the 1st of December is finished on the 1st of December.
Ready-made Christmas material
If you want the printed half ready to go: Vintage Christmas Ephemera for labels and tickets, and Christmas Clipart for 36 cut-apart figures across four sheets. For backgrounds, the free vintage paper set covers most of what a December journal needs.
Start now and you will have a finished book by January instead of five blank pages.
MORE GUIDES
Halloween junk journal ideas: the vintage palette