Collaging Journals.

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with collaging. I had Mod Podge-covered binders and notebooks coated with packing tape. My closet was filled with the product of dozens of ink cartridges and teen magazines, and my walls and lockers were collaged shrines to pop stars and movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. There was something so satisfying in that type of creating. Fast forward to college and I was collaging my feelings and hoarding scraps of magazines and found textures. Some of those still sit in a box, waiting for their moment to shine.

A couple of nights ago, I was organizing a neglected corner of my apartment and started to consolidate journals from the last decade of my life. (For the record, I didn’t intend to revisit all of my 20s but here we are.) I decided to bind some of the loose pages into a new journal and collage it with those very same scraps of paper I started saving so many years ago.

There was something incredibly cathartic in tying up so many loose ends—literally binding those thoughts together with scraps from a previous life. I also broke out my newest journal and decorated it with a dreamscape of the world I wish I could explore these days. Quick and dirty but oh so satisfying.

I don’t collage nearly enough anymore. I have always known it’s a foundation of my design work and greatly informs my personal aesthetic, but somehow I never seem to make enough time for it. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to keep up a regular practice. Until then, here’s to more collaged covers.