How Much Does It Cost to Start Junk Journaling? (An Honest Guide)

Let me guess, you’ve fallen a little bit in love with junk journaling, and now you’re wondering what it’s going to do to your bank account. Maybe you’ve seen someone’s craft desk online, groaning under fifty rolls of washi tape and a shelf of stamps, and quietly thought: “…I can’t afford this hobby.”

Good news, friend. You absolutely can. The honest answer to how much it costs to start junk journaling is: it can cost you literally nothing today, and it never has to cost much.

Let me break it down properly, what’s free, what’s genuinely worth buying, what the craft shops would love you to believe you need, and the one hidden cost nobody warns beginners about.

The short answer

Here’s the whole thing in one table, and then I’ll explain each tier:

Most people should start at tier one. Genuinely.

Level 1: Starting for free ($0)

This is not a gimmick or a “technically you could”, it’s how a huge number of us actually started. Go on a little hunt around your home and you’ll find almost everything you need:

• A book to work in: an old notebook, a half-used diary, or a few sheets of paper folded and stapled
• Glue: that dried-up glue stick in the drawer (add a drop of water, it revives!)
• Paper: envelopes, receipts, magazine pages, brown paper bags, tea bag wrappers, packaging, old book pages
• Colour: a tea bag or instant coffee for staining, any pen you own
• Extras: ribbon from a gift, string, dried flowers from the garden

Total: nothing. And here’s the thing nobody tells beginners, pages made from genuinely found materials often look better than pages made from a shop-bought kit, because everything is mismatched and real. That’s the whole aesthetic.

The free tier isn’t a compromised version of the hobby. It’s the original version.

Level 2: The honest starter kit (around $15)

Once you’ve made a few pages, you’ll notice a handful of things that would make life easier. This is what I’d actually buy, and nothing else:

1. A decent glue stick (~$2): the single biggest upgrade. Cheap glue makes paper curl and lift at the corners.
2. One roll of thin, neutral washi tape (~$3): one roll goes on a hundred pages. You do not need forty.
3. A white gel pen (~$2): outlines, dots, highlights. Makes cheap pages look intentional.
4. A brown ink pad (~$4): for ageing edges in five seconds flat.
5. A thrift-store hardback book (~$1–3): pages to use, plus a ready-made cover you can journal straight into.

That’s around $15, and it’ll last you months. If someone tells you the cost to start junk journaling is higher than this, they’re selling something.

Why these five and not others?

Each one solves a problem you’ll actually hit in your first month. The glue fixes curling. The ink pad fixes the “my prints look too new” problem. The gel pen fixes “my page looks unfinished.” The washi tape fixes “this piece won’t stay down.” And the thrift book solves the biggest one of all, having enough paper.

Notice what isn’t on the list: stamps, stencils, paints, dies, expensive paper pads. Those solve problems beginners don’t have yet.

Level 3: The comfortable kit ($30–40)

Only once you know you love this. A few things genuinely worth the money later on:

• Walnut ink crystals: richer antique tone than tea, one pot lasts forever
• Matte medium: glue, sealer and image-transfer medium in one pot
• A bone folder: crisp folds, if you’re making your own books
• A basic needle and thread: for binding your own signatures
• Small sharp scissors: for fussy cutting, where kitchen scissors genuinely struggle

Notice what’s still not on this list: die-cut machines, stamp sets, expensive paper pads. You can make gorgeous journals for years without any of them.

The hidden cost nobody mentions: printer ink

Here’s the one that catches people out.

If you start printing lots of pages, digital ephemera, backgrounds, full printable kits, ink becomes your real ongoing expense. A set of cartridges can cost more than everything else in this article combined, and printing full-colour backgrounds at high quality burns through them fast.

Three things keep it under control:

• Print cliparts and small elements, not full-page backgrounds. A sheet of cut-out flowers uses a fraction of the ink a full-bleed vintage page does, and backgrounds are the one thing you can get free from old books and packaging.
• Use draft mode for backgrounds, best quality only for focal pieces. Nobody can tell once it’s aged and layered.
• Print on cream paper instead of printing a cream background. The paper does the work for free.

This isn’t a reason to avoid printables, it’s a reason to print the right things.

What about printables? (The clever middle ground)

Here’s where digital printables quietly win on cost.

A physical sticker sheet gets used once and it’s gone. A digital clipart set costs a few dollars, downloads instantly, and you can print it as many times as you like, forever, across every journal, card and gift tag you ever make.

The maths is worth seeing plainly:

Per page, printables work out cheaper than almost anything else you can buy, as long as you’re printing elements rather than whole backgrounds. If you’d like to try it, our printable clipart sets, birthdays, animals, florals and more, are in our Etsy shop.

Where to buy things for less?

When you do decide to spend, spend in the right places.

Charity and thrift shops are the single best source. Old hardbacks, sheet music, dictionaries, hymn books, damaged photo albums, sewing tins full of buttons and lace, usually a dollar or less each, and packed with usable material.

Discount and dollar stores beat craft shops on the boring essentials: glue sticks, plain notebooks, string, basic scissors, tissue paper. Identical products, a fraction of the price.

The stationery aisle, not the craft aisle. Craft-branded versions of ordinary items carry a markup for the branding alone. Plain kraft card is plain kraft card.

Avoid pre-made “junk journal starter kits.” They’re the worst value in this hobby, a small selection of things you could source free, bundled at a premium, chosen by someone who doesn’t know your style.

4 ways to keep the cost near zero (forever):

1. Start a scrap box today:

Every pretty paper that enters your life goes in a box instead of the bin. Wrappers, tags, tissue, tickets. In two weeks you’ll have a bigger stash than a shop haul, free.

2. Raid charity shops:

Old hardbacks, sheet music, dictionaries, hymn books, damaged photo albums, usually a dollar or less, and packed with usable pages.

3. Print public-domain vintage images:

Archive.org, Smithsonian Open Access and the Biodiversity Heritage Library have millions of free, legal-to-print vintage illustrations. Botanical prints, old labels, maps. Costs you paper and ink.

4. Ask people to save things for you:

Tell one friend you junk journal and you’ll be handed envelopes and packaging forever. People love having a use for pretty rubbish.

The mistake that actually costs money:

It isn’t buying the wrong glue. It’s buying before you know your style.

Beginners spend $80 in one excited afternoon, then discover they hate stamping and love layering, and $60 of it sits unused in a drawer. Almost every experienced journaler has that drawer, and can tell you exactly what’s in it.

Make ten pages with almost nothing first. Your own pages will tell you what you actually reach for, and then you can buy that one thing with total confidence.

Frequently asked questions:

1- Can I really start junk journaling with no money at all?

Yes, genuinely. A notebook, a glue stick and a handful of paper scraps from your recycling is a complete starting kit. Plenty of people journal for months before buying anything.

2- What’s the one thing worth buying first?

A good glue stick. It sounds boring, but bad glue wrinkles paper and makes everything feel harder than it is. Around $2, and it fixes the most common beginner frustration.

3- Is junk journaling cheaper than scrapbooking?

Considerably. Scrapbooking leans on printed photos, matching paper packs, archival adhesive and page protectors. Junk journaling leans on things you already have, which is a big part of why the cost to start junk journaling stays so low.

4- Are digital printables worth it for beginners?

They’re one of the best-value things you can buy, because you print them again and again from a single purchase. Just don’t buy dozens of sets at once, one you love beats ten you never print.

5- How much should I spend in my first month?

Ideally nothing, and at most about $15. The first month is for finding out what you enjoy, and that’s information you can only get by making pages, not by shopping.

6- Do I need to buy a special journal to work in?

No. An old notebook, a thrift-store hardback, or five sheets of paper folded and stapled all work perfectly. Many journalers never buy a blank book in their lives, they make their own or alter old ones.

7- Is washi tape worth the money?

One roll, yes — it’s genuinely useful and lasts a very long time. Forty rolls, no. Washi is the single most over-bought item in this craft, and most collections sit largely unused.

8- What’s the most expensive mistake beginners make?

Buying a big bundle of supplies before making a single page. It’s expensive twice over: money on things you won’t use, and the quiet guilt that makes people avoid the hobby altogether.

9- Can I sell journals I make to cover my costs?

Many people do, once they’re confident. Just check the licence on any printables you’ve used, personal-use files can’t be sold on inside finished products without permission, though plenty of sellers happily allow small-scale handmade use if you ask.

So, what does it really cost?

Nothing today. About $15 whenever you feel like it. And that’s the honest answer.

This is a hobby built on the idea that beautiful things can come from what’s already around you, and that includes your budget. Don’t let anyone gatekeep it behind a shopping list.

Ready to make something with the free stuff you already own? Start here: How to Start a Junk Journal: A Step-by-Step Guide. Brand new to all this? Begin with What Is Junk Journaling? ♡