My Must-Have Tools for Creative Journaling
Discover my favorite tools and supplies for creative journaling projects.
One of the things I love about the process of creative journaling is that there are no rules. Whether you prefer to paint mixed-media creations or collage scraps of vintage ephemera, you can use any methods and materials that inspire you as part of your practice. With this variety of techniques at your disposal, it would be impossible to create a comprehensive tool list that covers every medium. However, there are a few essential types of tools that will be useful in almost any journaling process.
In my experience, journaling tools break down into three main categories (with some overlap between these general types) - tools for cutting, tools for shaping, and tools for attaching.
Cutting Tools
Cutting tools are designed to break paper or other materials down into smaller pieces. Having the basics - like a good pair of scissors for general cutting tasks, and a craft knife for more detailed work - will cover most of your bases. In general, if you’re working with both paper and fabric in your journaling process, you should have different scissors for each material, as paper dulls scissors more quickly than fabric, and fabric tends to benefit from sharper cutting blades.
There are additional tools you can add to your kit, like paper cutters - which cut clean and consistent straight lines - and cutting mats - which protect your work surface from sharp blades. I particularly like to use my paper cutter for trimming printables and cutting consistently sized pages or cards for larger projects. While these tools aren’t essential, they can make your life easier.
Shaping Tools
Shaping tools have some overlap with cutting tools, but have a slightly different function - they are designed to form or manipulate paper into different formats. A scoring board, which allows you to create clean folds for projects like cards or folders is one example of a shaping tool. Other tools, like corner punches or deckle edge rulers help shape the perimeter of your paper. I love to use deckle edge rulers to get a softer, handmade-looking torn edge on paper projects. This effect is especially pretty for projects with a vintage or artistic aesthetic.
Various types of paper punches are also great journaling tools, from the prosaic hole punch to specialized shape punches like hearts and flowers. You can use punches additively to make shaped paper elements for collage, handmade confetti, etc. Or you can use punches subtractively to create windows or cutouts in a paper substrate.
For the paper crafter with the most, die-cut/embossing machines can provide a whole new avenue for creating customized paper embellishments. These machines press paper over either an embossing plate (to create patterns of texture) or die-cut plates (to cut the paper into complicated shapes). Often, the same machine can work with both types of plates, so you can emboss and cut intricate designs consistently and quickly at home. However, these machines are expensive and often take up a lot of space on a work surface. I’ve been eyeing one of these machines for a couple years now, but have yet to take the plunge because I don’t know if the additional crafting capabilities are worth the space and budget considerations.
Attachment Tools
Lastly, attachment tools are all about sticking one piece of paper (or fabric, plastic, metal, etc.) to another. The most common tools for this task are glue and tape. My favorite attachment tool is the humble tape runner. These little hand-held applicators run strips of double-sided adhesive film across a surface without the mess of glue or the visibility of tape. While I use craft glue for projects with fine details or thick/fragile papers, tape-runners are far and away my favorite crafting adhesive for most journaling applications.
For even more bulky materials like fabric trims or small charms, a hot glue gun comes in handy. In my experience, traditional craft glues can’t always handle the weight and texture of items like intricate laces, heavy fabrics, or slick/shiny objects (and craft glues can sometimes leave fabric with a sticky, tacky, or shiny texture, even after drying). A hot glue gun, while more bulky and inconvenient than other adhesive tools, is a heavy-duty solution for these tricky materials.
If you want to use visible connectors in your journal, your options run the gamut from colorful washi tapes to metal eyelets to decorative ribbons. A lot of crafters even like to use their sewing machines to stitch paper or fabric together in their projects. I haven’t tried this technique out, but I do love the way it looks! I frequently use decorative washi and PET tapes in my journals to tip in journal cards, attach dimensional elements like flaps or envelopes, or connect collage elements.
No matter how you prefer to journal, there are a variety of useful tools and supplies that can enhance your creative projects. Painters may include brushes, palette knives, and acrylic medium in their toolkit, while bookbinders might invest in a heavy-duty press and a sharp awl. This flexibility is one of the great joys of the journaling process - it can expand or simplify to fit your needs and preference. Let me know in the comments - what are your essential journaling tools?
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