served as a blueprint<\/a> for many of those organizations. In late August, more than 50 crafters celebrated the club\u2019s first birthday at a Glendale pool party. (More would have come, but the rented venue capped attendance.)<\/p>\nThey sprawled around the rim of the backyard swimming pool and across the adjacent lawn, their animal-print blankets and beach towels crowded with paper scraps and glue sticks. Veteran journalers refilled matching Fujifilm photo printers, while newbies leafed through fresh sticker books. Once unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the supplies lay like a potluck spread, free for the taking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I buy stickers for myself, it\u2019s kind of excessive,\u201d said attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to attend the meetup. \u201cBut I brought them to share as well.\u201d <\/p>\n
Huang\u2019s journal pages, filled with receipts, photos and food packaging, chronicle her travels and daily adventures. Sometimes, she sits her friends down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell style, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like real-life Instagram,\u201d she said, laughing. <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585901_703_\")
<\/p>\n
A spread from Sophia Huang\u2019s junk journal, featuring mementos from a visit to the Orange County Museum of Art.<\/p>\n
(Sophia Huang)<\/p>\n
It was nearly 100 degrees outside in Glendale, but Huang and her fellow party attendees stayed at the Junk Journal Club soiree for hours anyway \u2014 blissfully ignoring the sweat melting the makeup off their smiling faces.<\/p>\n
Club founder Nandi Owolo, 30, watched the revelry from a secluded lounge chair, sitting for the first time all day, and marveled at what her little club had become.<\/p>\n
Owolo, an Echo Park resident, started Junk Journal Club just a few months after she herself got into the hobby last year. She began dabbling after a foot injury left her homebound, and she was thrilled to finally find a craft that felt accessible to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried so many crafts. I can\u2019t paint, can\u2019t draw. I tried doing the embroidery hoops and the crocheting of little animals,\u201d Owolo said. \u201cI tried it all, failed at it every time.<\/p>\n
\u201cJunk journaling was the first time where it was like, I can be a part of that club,\u201d she said, and it felt natural to her to extend that invitation to others.<\/p>\n
![\"Junk](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585902_960_\")
<\/p>\n
Nandi Owolo founded Junk Journal Club in August 2024. <\/p>\n
(Kayla Otero \/ Junk Journal Club)<\/p>\n
Early on, Owolo envisioned her junk journaling club would consist of a dozen or so people gathering each month to journal together, and that was enough for her. But word got out, the demand was there, and before she knew it, Junk Journal Club was a full-blown business.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I ever saw it becoming what it is today,\u201d Owolo said.<\/p>\n
These days, the former entertainment executive collaborates with local artists and lifestyle brands to put on Junk Journal Club events, which draw attendees from as far as Fresno and regularly sell out within minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo charges around $35 on average per ticket, just enough to break even.<\/p>\n
On top of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Club also boasts a Discord community, which Owolo calls its \u201cvirtual town square,\u201d of nearly 1,700 members from across the globe. There, club affiliates swap journaling tips, share their own spreads and coordinate regional junk journaling meetups.<\/p>\n
Junk Journal Club members agreed that L.A. is a notoriously difficult place to make meaningful adult friendships because people live so far apart and don\u2019t interact much with those outside of their circles. <\/p>\n
But attending club meetups has made befriending strangers easy, they said. <\/p>\n
Izik Vu, 25, of Gardena has weekly junk journaling dates with other Junk Journal Club members who live in the South Bay. El Segundo native Adrianna Dreckmann, 25, who struggled to rebuild her social life in L.A. after attending college in the Midwest, went to an Oasis concert earlier this month with someone she met at a February club meetup. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs you get older, you\u2019re no longer in those isolated bubbles of college clubs and classes and stuff like that,\u201d Dreckmann said. \u201cSo you kind of just have to make them yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n
Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based owner of Lalgan stickers and junk journal supplies, gained one of her closest friends through sponsoring a Junk Journal Club event.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just that kind of instantaneous connection,\u201d Dekermenjian said. \u201cI feel like I have known her my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n
As someone who historically had a small circle and struggled to make friends as an adult, Dekermenjian said, \u201cI didn\u2019t realize there\u2019s this part of me that\u2019s wanted this all along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even for self-proclaimed introverts like Christa Hansen, 31, showing up to Junk Journal Club meetups alone is manageable, because everyone is so friendly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that really helps people break the ice is a lot of times people are really generous with their supplies,\u201d Hansen said. \u201cSo people are just sharing things, exchanging things, showing pages of their journal, and then suddenly it doesn\u2019t feel very scary to talk to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Christa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585903_914_\")
<\/p>\n
Christa Hansen\u2019s junk journal includes three-dimensional elements that lend it the quality of a children\u2019s pop-up book.<\/p>\n
(Christa Hansen)<\/p>\n
Hansen went solo to the August Junk Journal Club meetup, but within an hour, she was fangirling with a pair of roomates \u2014 Paige Schaeffer, 27, and Millie Jones, 27 \u2014 whom she\u2019d just met, about the cult-favorite Nathalie L\u00e9t\u00e9 Sticker Book and prominent junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the \u201cCraft Queen\u201d by her followers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait, I would freak out if I got to meet her,\u201d Schaeffer said, gushing.<\/p>\n
Calvi, 30, who lives in Sydney, would have laughed shyly. She never set out to be the world-famous junk-journaling influencer she\u2019s become.<\/p>\n
She was just a \u201ccrafty girl,\u201d who had tired of outdated Y2K sticker designs and decided to take matters into her own hands, she said in a recent interview with The Times. <\/p>\n
\u201cI started out by making my own sticker sheet just at home, in my bedroom. And people wanted to buy it, but I never wanted to start a business,\u201d Calvi said. She listed just one sticker sheet, then a few more, and wound up with an internationally beloved junk journal supplies brand, Martina\u2019s Tiny Store, whose products are sold at Urban Outfitters locations throughout the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n
![\"Martina](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585904_48_\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of my influences are like Rookie Mag, Tumblr, Sofia Coppola, all of that. But really, it\u2019s my childhood and my teenhood, especially that I draw inspiration from,\u201d Martina Calvi said.<\/p>\n
(Martina Calvi)<\/p>\n
Last October, Calvi released her book \u201cThe Art of Memory Collecting,\u201d which guides readers through 15 different craft projects to flex their creative muscles. The chapter on junk journaling resonated so much that just a year later she is set to release a book<\/a> entirely dedicated to the hobby. (Hansen already preordered it.)<\/p>\nCalvi, who has finished 30-plus junk journals of her own, believes it\u2019s human nature to collect tidbits and tokens to make meaning out of our everyday lives, that everyone has a box under the bed or a shelf in the closet spilling over with ephemera. But as for this \u201ccrafty renaissance,\u201d she said she\u2019s seeing among the younger generations, there are factors other than pure nostalgia at play.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely linked to what\u2019s happening at the moment, I think, with the rise of AI and living in such a digital era,\u201d Calvi said. \u201cI think it\u2019s only natural that we feel pulled in the other direction, almost like we\u2019re finding comfort in the tangible and handmade \u2014 that\u2019s familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of that, craft clubs are a low-cost way to socialize that doesn\u2019t involve drinking, something a lot of young people are looking for in a time when living costs are high, she said.<\/p>\n
Kalli LeVasseur, 33, one of Owolo\u2019s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, saw a similar craving among her peers in Chicago for a sense of community that didn\u2019t revolve around drinking or being glued to a screen. It\u2019s a huge reason she and friend Cheyenne Livelsberger started Chicago\u2019s Cool Kids Craft Club, she told The Times in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Another motive, LeVasseur said, was more personal. In 2023, LeVasseur lost her grandmother unexpectedly. Around the same time, her brother became very sick, and her father was diagnosed with cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, my gosh, I don\u2019t think I can handle one more thing,\u2019\u201d LeVasseur said, adding that she told herself, \u201cI need something healthy to do as I\u2019m moving through this grief.\u201d<\/p>\n
LeVasseur\u2019s grandmother was a quilter, and her mother a scrapbooker, so crafting, to her, was in her \u201clineage.\u201d But she struggled to commit to any particular practice, always feeling that they were too demanding or restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi\u2019s content.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Instacarted from Michaels one night the actual journal that I got for the first time, and literally from that moment, I haven\u2019t stopped,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
![\"Kalli](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585906_233_\")
<\/p>\n
Kalli LeVasseur\u2019s journal pages range from curated, sticker-laden spreads to what she called \u201cjunk dumps.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Kalli LeVasseur)<\/p>\n
Through junk journaling, LeVasseur came back to herself, and got back into the world, she said. It\u2019s counterintuitive, given crafting is generally understood to be a solitary, home-based activity. But to fill your journal, you have to go places.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels so corny, but truly, it has changed my life,\u201d LeVasseur said, her voice breaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, there was the grief piece of it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in adulthood, especially now that I\u2019m in my 30s and jobs are more demanding, having time to create and play with no pressure and making that part of my routine has genuinely made my life much happier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Owolo\u2019s Junk Journal Club guestbook, which lay inconspicuously among the party favors at the August gathering in Glendale, was filled with many such expressions of joy and gratitude. <\/p>\n
\u201cThank you so much for creating a space for us all to get creative and get out the house,\u201d one signee wrote in the guestbook. \u201cThis is my second meetup, and it\u2019s hard to leave without a smile on my face.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Nandi](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757585907_559_\")
<\/p>\n
Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Club attendees to sign the guest book at her club meetups.<\/p>\n
(Malia Mendez \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved sharing this space with you,\u201d another echoed.<\/p>\n
Sometimes Owolo reads the messages late at night in a Canter\u2019s booth in Beverly Grove and just cries, she said. <\/p>\n
Maybe she\u2019d make a stop later that night. But for now, she had a party to throw. <\/p>\n