Hello, and welcome to my cozy corner of the internet.
I’m Amelia, and this whole website exists because of a glue stick and a very difficult few months.
How this started:
A while ago, life got heavy in the way life sometimes does. My head wouldn’t go quiet. I couldn’t concentrate on a book, couldn’t sit still for anything, and every evening ended the same way, scrolling on my phone until it was too late, feeling worse than when I’d started.
Somewhere in that stretch I came across junk journaling. Not the polished, expensive kind, the real kind, where people glue old envelopes and tea-stained paper into secondhand books and make something lovely out of things headed for the bin.
So I tried it. I tore up an old paperback, dug a dried-out glue stick out of a drawer, and made a genuinely ugly first page.
And something surprising happened. For twenty minutes, my hands were busy and my head was quiet.
That was it. That was the whole beginning.
Why it worked when other things didn’t?
I’ve since realised why this craft, specifically, was the one that stuck.
There’s no way to fail at it. If a page goes wrong, you glue another piece of paper over it and the mistake becomes a background. Nothing is ruined, ever. After months of feeling like I was getting everything slightly wrong, that mattered more than I can properly explain.
It’s also slow. You tear an edge, you wait for glue to dry, you nudge a scrap a few millimetres to the left. You can’t rush it, and it turns out that being unable to rush something is a small mercy.
And it costs almost nothing. My first ten pages were made entirely from envelopes, tea bags, packaging and an old book. I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s the reason this blog will always tell you what you can get for free before it tells you what you can buy.
What you’ll find here?
Myetopica is where I write down everything I’ve learned, in the plain, unfussy way I wish someone had explained it to me at the start.
- Beginner’s Guide: start here if you’re brand new. What junk journaling actually is, how to make your first page, and all the words people use that nobody bothers to explain.
- Supplies: what you genuinely need, what you already own, and what the craft shops would love you to buy but really shouldn’t.
- Cliparts & Printables: how to print, cut, age and layer digital pieces so they look like they’ve been in a drawer for fifty years.
- Page Ideas: spreads and inspiration for when you’re staring at a blank page with no idea where to begin.
- Seasonal: autumn, Christmas, spring. The cozy stuff.
Everything here is written for beginners, because that’s who I was when I needed it, and because this craft has a strange habit of making people feel behind before they’ve even started. You’re not behind. There’s nowhere to be.
About the little shop:
Alongside the blog, I design and sell printable clipart sets, birthday sets, sweet animals, seasonal florals, over on my Etsy shop.
They came about because of a problem I kept running into myself. A physical sticker sheet gets used once and it’s gone. A digital set costs a few pounds, downloads instantly, and you can print it forever, across every journal, card and gift tag you’ll ever make.
I design them to layer well together, and to age beautifully once you’ve inked the edges. That’s genuinely all they are: pretty paper you can make as much of as you like.
You will never need to buy anything from me to use this blog. Every guide here works perfectly well with envelopes from your recycling, and I’d honestly rather you started with those.
What I believe about this craft?
A few things I’ll keep repeating, because I think they matter:
- Junk journaling should cost almost nothing. The whole point is beauty from what’s already around you. Anyone gatekeeping it behind a shopping list has missed it.
- Ugly pages are allowed. Encouraged, even. Your first pages will be wobbly, and one day you’ll flip back to them fondly.
- Little and often beats long and rare. Ten minutes counts. A page can take a fortnight.
- The calm is the point. Not the finished page, not the photograph of it. The quiet twenty minutes.
Come say hello
If something here helped, or you’ve got a question, or you just want to show me a page you’re proud of, please do get in touch. Messages from people making things are genuinely the best part of running this.
You’ll find me on the contact page.
Thank you for being here. Go make something wonky. ♡ Amelia