Sip and Create Junk Journaling

Sip + Create Junk Journaling

DATE: Saturday, May 9th, 2026

TIME: 6:00PM - 8:00PM

LOCATION: Merge Art Studio, 2000 Nance St. Studio B-126

Event Description: Sip + Create Junk Journaling

A themed art night for creatives.

Junk journaling is the playful, easy art of transforming everyday paper scraps and forgotten ephemera into a meaningful, visual record of your life. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll celebrate imperfection, curiosity, and creativity by giving new purpose to materials that might otherwise be tossed away. Receipts, catalogues, magazines, napkins, seed packets, book pages, postage stamps, junk mail, greeting cards, scraps of lace, packaging, old wallpaper—if it feels like junk to you, it’s exactly what we want to work with.

Participants are encouraged to bring a variety of paper items and small flat objects that reflect their daily lives, interests, or memories. Together, we’ll explore simple collage techniques, layering, and composition, learning how color, texture, and text can work together to tell a story. No artistic experience is necessary—junk journaling is about process, not perfection.

The workshop will also introduce a gentle, generative prompt designed to spark reflection and help you move past the blank page. You’ll leave with several completed or in-progress journal pages, new ideas for using what you already have at home, and the confidence to continue creating on your own.

Whether you’re a seasoned journaler or completely new to creative journaling, this workshop offers a relaxed, welcoming space to experiment, connect, and rediscover the beauty hidden in the everyday.

About the Instructor

Holly Lyn Walrath is a narrative artist focusing on the merging of art and words. From erasure poetry to radical zines to speculative fiction to poem paintings, Holly's work explores all things cross-genre. Holly has taught writing and art workshops online and in the Houston area for over ten years.

Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of three books, including Glimmerglass Girl, The Smallest of Bones, and Numinous Stones. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. She is the managing editor of Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFFH publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented voices and genres. As a freelance editor, she provides editing services for writers and organizations of all genres, experiences, and backgrounds, but enjoys working with new writers best.

About Merge Studio

Merge is the thought-child of artists Holly Lyn Walrath and Leslie Archibald. It's a space to explore the merging of minds and the merging of arts of all kinds. Merge hosts monthly workshops and creative experiences out of 2000 Nance Street, Studio B-126