Karly

I have a small confession to make before we begin. I love junk journaling. I love the stickers, the washi tapes, the soft palettes, the tiny layered collages that look like they belong in a café in Notting Hill rather than on someone’s desk at 11 p.m. I love the materials, I really do. If anything, I’m part of the problem because I see a spread online and immediately think, I need that exact set of stickers in my life. But lately, something has been nagging at me.

A creator in the junk journaling community recently said that people were copying her spreads. And while that might be true on an individual level, it also made me pause because the uncomfortable reality is that a lot of it already looks the same. Not identical in a literal sense, but close enough that if you scrolled past quickly, you wouldn’t be able to tell who made what. And that’s where things get interesting.

Because there is a difference between inspiration and replication, even if we don’t always want to name it as such. Inspiration should feel like a starting point, a reference, a spark that you carry into something that still feels like yours. Replication, on the other hand, tends to flatten everything into sameness, even when it’s done unintentionally.

The thing is, junk journaling exists in a very specific visual ecosystem. The same sticker packs circulate. The same fonts, the same muted browns and creams, the same torn paper edges that are meant to look effortless but are in fact highly curated.

And I will say it now. I know myself well enough to admit that I could never tear my scrapbook paper just to make it look uneven. I would sit there, paralysed, trying to make the imperfection look perfect, which defeats the entire point. That kind of curated messiness is almost a performance in itself, an aesthetic of effortlessness that actually requires a very particular kind of effort.

Which brings me to something else that feels important to say. There is a difference between collecting ephemera and buying ephemera.

Both are valid. Let me be clear about that. Not everyone has a drawer full of old receipts, train tickets, letters, packaging, and scraps of life waiting to be repurposed. Buying materials is often what makes the hobby accessible and enjoyable.

But there is also something slightly ironic about the term “junk journal” when the “junk” is pristine, coordinated, and freshly delivered in a carefully curated bundle. At that point, it starts to feel less like documenting a life and more like staging one.

And again, this is not an accusation. It is an observation. The spreads are beautiful, undeniably so. They are aesthetically satisfying in a way that makes you want to recreate them, and that is precisely why they circulate so widely. But if everything is sourced, matched, and arranged to fit a pre-existing visual template, we end up with pages that look personal without necessarily being personal.

And then we call it “inspiration,” which is doing a lot of work here.

From a linguistic perspective, it is actually fascinating. “Inspired by” functions almost like a politeness strategy. It softens what might otherwise be perceived as copying. It allows us to participate in a shared aesthetic without directly challenging the idea that creativity should be individual. No one wants to say “I copied this,” because that would disrupt the harmony of the community. So we reach for a term that feels kinder, safer, more socially acceptable.

But that does not mean the distinction disappears.

Part of the issue is that platforms reward familiarity. The algorithm does not necessarily care about originality in the way we romantically imagine it. It cares about what people recognise, what they linger on, what feels aesthetically pleasing in a way that has already been validated. So naturally, creators gravitate towards what works. The spreads that perform well become templates, whether we consciously treat them that way or not. And suddenly, a creative hobby starts to develop a formula.

None of this is to say that people are being malicious. Most of the time, they are not. They are engaging with something they enjoy, collecting materials that are widely available, and trying to recreate a feeling they have seen online. That is human. That is how trends have always worked.

But it does raise a slightly uncomfortable question. At what point does a shared aesthetic stop being communal and start becoming indistinguishable?

I also think there is something a bit contradictory about claiming ownership over a style that is itself built from mass-produced elements. If we are all buying from the same shops, using the same sticker sheets, and layering them in similar ways, can any one person truly claim that look as entirely their own?

And I say all of this as someone who is very much drawn to those same materials. I get the appeal. I understand why certain combinations work. I am not above wanting my pages to look like the ones I save on my phone.

But I do think we owe it to ourselves, at least a little, to push beyond that.

To take the aesthetic and do something slightly unexpected with it. To introduce a colour that does not quite belong, a layout that feels less symmetrical, a piece of handwriting that is not perfectly curated. To let it look a bit more like us and a bit less like a screenshot of something we have already seen.

Because the point is not to reject inspiration altogether. That would be impossible and, frankly, joyless. The point is to let inspiration be a starting point rather than a destination.

When “Inspiration” Starts to Look the Same: On Junk Journaling, Originality, and the Performance of Creativity

I have a small confession to make before we begin. I love junk journaling. I love the stickers, the washi tapes, the soft palettes, the tiny layered collages that look like they belong in a café in Notting Hill rather than on someone’s desk at 11 p.m. I love the materials, I really do. If anything, I’m part of the problem because I see a spread online and immediately think, I need that exact set of stickers in my life.

But lately, something has been nagging at me.

A creator in the junk journaling community recently said that people were copying her spreads. And while that might be true on an individual level, it also made me pause because the uncomfortable reality is that a lot of it already looks the same. Not identical in a literal sense, but close enough that if you scrolled past quickly, you wouldn’t be able to tell who made what.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Because there is a difference between inspiration and replication, even if we don’t always want to name it as such. Inspiration should feel like a starting point, a reference, a spark that you carry into something that still feels like yours. Replication, on the other hand, tends to flatten everything into sameness, even when it’s done unintentionally.

The thing is, junk journaling exists in a very specific visual ecosystem. The same sticker packs circulate. The same fonts, the same muted browns and creams, the same torn paper edges that are meant to look effortless but are in fact highly curated.

And I will say it now. I know myself well enough to admit that I could never tear my scrapbook paper just to make it look uneven. I would sit there, paralysed, trying to make the imperfection look perfect, which defeats the entire point. That kind of curated messiness is almost a performance in itself, an aesthetic of effortlessness that actually requires a very particular kind of effort.

Which brings me to something else that feels important to say.

There is a difference between collecting ephemera and buying ephemera.

Both are valid. Let me be clear about that. Not everyone has a drawer full of old receipts, train tickets, letters, packaging, and scraps of life waiting to be repurposed. Buying materials is often what makes the hobby accessible and enjoyable.

But there is also something slightly ironic about the term “junk journal” when the “junk” is pristine, coordinated, and freshly delivered in a carefully curated bundle.

At that point, it starts to feel less like documenting a life and more like staging one.

And again, this is not an accusation. It is an observation. The spreads are beautiful, undeniably so. They are aesthetically satisfying in a way that makes you want to recreate them, and that is precisely why they circulate so widely.

But if everything is sourced, matched, and arranged to fit a pre-existing visual template, we end up with pages that look personal without necessarily being personal.

And then we call it “inspiration,” which is doing a lot of work here.

From a linguistic perspective, it is actually fascinating. “Inspired by” functions almost like a politeness strategy. It softens what might otherwise be perceived as copying. It allows us to participate in a shared aesthetic without directly challenging the idea that creativity should be individual. No one wants to say “I copied this,” because that would disrupt the harmony of the community. So we reach for a term that feels kinder, safer, more socially acceptable.

But that does not mean the distinction disappears.

Part of the issue is that platforms reward familiarity. The algorithm does not necessarily care about originality in the way we romantically imagine it. It cares about what people recognise, what they linger on, what feels aesthetically pleasing in a way that has already been validated. So naturally, creators gravitate towards what works. The spreads that perform well become templates, whether we consciously treat them that way or not.

And suddenly, a creative hobby starts to develop a formula.

None of this is to say that people are being malicious. Most of the time, they are not. They are engaging with something they enjoy, collecting materials that are widely available, and trying to recreate a feeling they have seen online. That is human. That is how trends have always worked.

But it does raise a slightly uncomfortable question. At what point does a shared aesthetic stop being communal and start becoming indistinguishable?

I also think there is something a bit contradictory about claiming ownership over a style that is itself built from mass-produced elements. If we are all buying from the same shops, using the same sticker sheets, and layering them in similar ways, can any one person truly claim that look as entirely their own?

And I say all of this as someone who is very much drawn to those same materials. I get the appeal. I understand why certain combinations work. I am not above wanting my pages to look like the ones I save on my phone.

But I do think we owe it to ourselves, at least a little, to push beyond that.

To take the aesthetic and do something slightly unexpected with it. To introduce a colour that does not quite belong, a layout that feels less symmetrical, a piece of handwriting that is not perfectly curated. To let it look a bit more like us and a bit less like a screenshot of something we have already seen.

Because the point is not to reject inspiration altogether. That would be impossible and, frankly, joyless. The point is to let inspiration be a starting point rather than a destination.

Otherwise, we end up with beautiful pages, yes, but strangely anonymous. And that feels like a loss for something that is meant to be personal.