Top 18 'Texture-Layering' Collage Techniques to learn for beginners turning junk mail into journal art - Goh Ling Yong
Before you toss that pile of credit card offers, colourful flyers, and windowed envelopes into the recycling bin, stop for a moment. What if I told you that pile of "junk" is actually a treasure trove of free, high-quality art supplies? Welcome to the wonderful world of junk mail art journaling, where we transform unwanted paper into stunning, textured masterpieces.
The secret to elevating simple paper scraps into captivating art lies in one powerful concept: texture-layering. It’s the art of building up surfaces that not only look interesting but also feel interesting. It’s about creating depth, history, and a tactile experience on the page that invites the viewer to look closer. By combining different materials and techniques, you can create a visual story that is uniquely yours, all with materials that were destined for the landfill.
In this guide, we'll dive deep into 18 beginner-friendly collage techniques specifically designed for turning junk mail into journal art. Forget the need for expensive supplies. All you need is some glue, a pair of scissors, your hands, and that ever-growing stack of mail. Let's unlock the potential of paper and start creating.
1. The Foundational Choice: Tearing vs. Cutting
This is the first and most fundamental decision you'll make, and it dramatically impacts the mood of your piece. Cutting paper with scissors or a craft knife creates clean, sharp, and deliberate lines. This is perfect for geometric designs, creating structure, or isolating a specific image or word with precision. The hard edge provides a sense of order and control.
Tearing, on the other hand, creates a soft, organic, and fibrous edge. This feathered look is less controlled and adds an immediate layer of texture and a handmade feel to your work. To control the tear, hold the paper firmly and tear it towards your body for a wider, more visible fibrous edge, or away from you for a cleaner tear. This simple choice sets the entire tone for your collage composition.
Pro-Tip: Mix both! Use sharp, cut edges for your background or foundational layers to create a grid, then overlay them with soft, torn pieces to create a dynamic contrast between the structured and the organic.
2. The "Wet" Tear for Feathered Edges
Want to take your tearing game to the next level? Try the wet tear technique. This method gives you beautifully soft, almost cloud-like edges that are impossible to achieve with a dry tear. It’s a wonderfully meditative process that adds a delicate, aged quality to your paper.
Simply use a small paintbrush, a water brush pen, or even just your fingertip dipped in water to "draw" a line where you want the tear to be. Let the water soak in for a few seconds; you'll see the paper darken slightly. Then, gently pull the paper apart along the wet line. The water weakens the paper's fibres, allowing for an incredibly soft, feathery separation. This is perfect for creating atmospheric landscapes or ethereal, dreamy layers in your art journal.
3. Sanding & Distressing for a Worn-In Vibe
Some junk mail, especially glossy flyers or postcards, can look a bit too pristine. The solution? Give it some history! Distressing your paper with a bit of sandpaper or an emery board is a fantastic way to add instant age and texture. It breaks down the glossy finish and introduces a subtle, tactile roughness.
Gently rub a fine-grit sandpaper over the surface of the paper. You can focus on the edges to make them look worn or sand the entire surface to mute the colours and create a matte, toothy finish. This not only adds visual texture but also prepares the surface to accept other media like ink or paint more readily. Don’t be afraid to fold or crease the paper first and then sand along the high points for a realistically aged look.
4. Crumpling & Smoothing for a Fabric-Like Feel
This is perhaps the most satisfying and simple texture technique out there. Take a piece of junk mail—a security envelope with its intricate patterns works beautifully for this—and crumple it up into a tight ball. The more you crumple, the more intense the texture will be.
Carefully flatten it back out. You’ll be left with a network of fine lines and creases, transforming the flat paper into a surface that resembles wrinkled fabric or cracked earth. You can use it as is, or you can enhance the texture by running an ink pad or a bit of paint over the surface with a dry brush (more on that later!), which will catch on all the raised folds and make the pattern pop.
5. Weaving Paper Strips for Intricate Patterns
This technique looks complex but is surprisingly simple and creates a stunning, graphic effect. Start by cutting two different pieces of junk mail—perhaps one with text and another with a solid colour or pattern—into strips of equal width.
Glue down a series of parallel strips from your first paper onto your journal page, leaving a small gap between each one. Once the glue is dry, take the strips from your second paper and, one by one, weave them over and under the first set, securing the ends with a dab of glue. This creates a beautiful woven texture that adds immediate depth and a sense of skilled craftsmanship to your page.
6. Layering Transparencies with Window Envelopes
Those little cellophane windows on billing envelopes are pure gold for collage artists. Don't throw them away! Carefully cut them out, leaving a small paper border, or even use the entire front panel of the envelope. These transparent windows are perfect for layering.
You can place them over an interesting image, a block of text, or a vibrant colour. The window acts as a frame, drawing the eye to what's beneath while adding a glossy, smooth texture that contrasts with the matte paper around it. You can also stamp, draw with permanent markers, or drip alcohol inks onto the plastic itself to create your own custom transparent elements.
7. "Ghosting" with White Gesso or Paint
Sometimes a background layer is too "loud." The patterns are too bold, or the text is too distracting. This is where "ghosting" comes in. It’s a technique for pushing busy layers into the background, adding a hazy, dreamlike quality to your work while still allowing hints of the original pattern to show through.
Using a dry brush or a palette knife, apply a thin, semi-opaque layer of white gesso or acrylic paint over the area you want to mute. You can scrape it on unevenly, leaving some parts of the underlying paper more visible than others. This adds a chalky, rustic texture and creates a perfect, slightly gritty surface for writing or drawing on top of later.
8. Stamping on Found Text
Junk mail is full of text—big, bold headlines, tiny terms and conditions, and everything in between. While this text can be interesting on its own, you can transform it by stamping over it. The key is to use a pattern that contrasts with the rigid structure of the text.
Use a botanical stamp, a geometric pattern, or even a handmade stamp carved from an eraser. Ink it up and stamp directly over a block of text. The combination of the mechanical, uniform text and the organic, handmade mark creates a fascinating visual tension. It's a core principle Goh Ling Yong often incorporates into mixed-media work: the power of contrast. The text becomes less about reading and more about a textural background element.
9. Ink & Water Splatters for Organic Chaos
Life isn't always neat, and your art journal pages don't have to be either. Adding splatters of ink or watered-down paint is a fantastic way to introduce a bit of controlled chaos and organic texture. It breaks up large, flat areas of colour and adds energy to the composition.
Load a paintbrush with a liquid medium like India ink, watercolour, or watered-down acrylic paint. Hold the brush over your page and either tap the handle against your other hand or flick the bristles with your finger. Experiment with how much water you use and how high you hold the brush to create different sizes of splatters, from fine mists to big, bold drips.
10. Dry Brushing to Highlight Texture
Dry brushing is the perfect partner to techniques like crumpling or embossing. It's a painting technique that uses a minimal amount of paint to catch only the raised surfaces of a textured page, making the texture dramatically more visible.
Put a small amount of thick acrylic paint on your palette. Dip the very tips of a stiff, dry brush into the paint, then wipe most of it off on a paper towel until the brush seems almost empty. Lightly skim the brush over your textured surface. The paint will only adhere to the peaks and ridges, leaving the valleys untouched and creating a stunning, high-contrast effect.
11. Frottage (Rubbings) with Found Textures
Frottage is a classic surrealist technique that involves creating a rubbing of a textured surface. It’s a magical way to "lift" textures from the world around you and transfer them directly onto your junk mail papers before you even glue them down.
Place a piece of thin paper (like the inside of a security envelope or a page from a brochure) over a textured object—a coin, a leaf, a piece of burlap, or a grater. Then, using the side of a crayon, graphite stick, or oil pastel, rub over the paper. The texture of the object beneath will be miraculously transferred to your paper, creating a unique, patterned art supply you can then tear up and use in your collage.
12. Stitching (Real or Faux) for a Tactile Touch
Adding stitching introduces a completely different element to your paper collage: the softness and domesticity of textiles. It’s a wonderful way to add both real and visual texture, and it suggests a sense of mending or holding things together.
You can use a sewing machine to stitch directly onto a piece of junk mail or a cluster of layered papers before gluing it into your journal. Set the machine to a long stitch length and don't use thread in the bobbin to avoid a tangled mess. Alternatively, you can hand-stitch with embroidery floss for a more rustic look or simply use a pen to draw faux stitches along the edges of your paper pieces.
13. Embossing with Found Objects
Embossing is the art of creating a raised design on paper. While there are fancy tools for this, you can achieve a similar effect with everyday objects. This technique adds a subtle, elegant texture that you can feel with your fingertips.
Place your paper on a slightly soft surface, like a stack of newspaper or a craft mat. Using a blunt-ended tool like an empty ballpoint pen, a knitting needle, or a clay stylus, press firmly and "draw" a pattern onto the paper. You can trace around a stencil, a cookie cutter, or just freehand a design. When you flip the paper over, your design will be raised and beautifully textured.
14. Creating "Paper Fabric"
As a dedicated upcycler of materials, this is one of my favorite techniques taught by artists like Goh Ling Yong because it completely transforms the nature of paper. "Paper fabric" is a sturdy, flexible, and sewable material you create entirely from junk mail and glue.
Tear your paper into small pieces and glue them down in overlapping layers onto a base sheet until it's completely covered. Add another layer of glue on top to seal it. Once it’s completely dry, the result is a tough, leathery, and waterproof material. You can then cut it, punch it, and even sew it with a machine to create pockets, tabs, or tags for your journal.
15. Lifting Color with Packing Tape
This is a brilliant subtractive technique that works best on glossy, ink-heavy papers like magazine pages or high-quality flyers. It allows you to lift the ink off the page in a beautifully unpredictable way, creating a distressed, ghost-like image.
Press a piece of clear packing tape firmly onto the area of the image you want to lift. Burnish it well with the back of a spoon or a bone folder to ensure a strong bond. Then, quickly rip the tape off. A layer of the ink will be transferred to the tape, leaving a faded, beautifully textured version of the image on the paper. The tape itself, now with the ink on it, becomes a new collage element!
16. Using Window Envelopes as Frames and Pockets
We've already talked about using the plastic windows, but the entire envelope front is a gift. It comes with a pre-made frame! You can glue the entire panel into your journal, creating a natural focal point.
Slide a contrasting piece of junk mail, a personal photo, or a small drawing behind the window to feature it. You can also turn it into a functional element. By only gluing down three sides of the envelope panel, you create an instant tuck spot or pocket to hold other journal cards, notes, or ephemera.
17. Coffee or Tea Staining for an Antique Look
This classic technique is popular for a reason—it’s easy, effective, and makes your paper smell amazing. Staining your junk mail with coffee or tea instantly gives it a warm, vintage, and authentically aged appearance. The uneven staining also adds a lovely, subtle layer of visual texture.
Brew some strong coffee or tea and let it cool. You can then either brush the liquid onto your paper with a large paintbrush or completely submerge the paper in a shallow tray for a few minutes. Let the papers dry completely (you can air dry them for a flatter finish or bake them on low heat in the oven for a more crinkled, rustic texture).
18. Masking & Stenciling with Torn Paper
You don't need fancy stencils to create interesting shapes and patterns. The scraps of paper on your desk are perfect for masking. This technique involves using a piece of paper to block off an area while you apply paint or ink around it.
Simply tear a piece of junk mail to create an interesting organic edge. Lay this torn scrap onto your journal page and then use an ink-blending tool, a sponge, or a spray ink to apply colour along the torn edge. When you lift the scrap, you'll be left with a crisp, beautifully shaped area of colour next to a soft, textured edge. This is a perfect way to define horizons in a landscape or just add graphic interest to your background.
Your Art Supplies Are Everywhere
And there you have it—18 ways to start seeing that pile of junk mail not as clutter, but as a chest full of creative potential. The beauty of art journaling is that there are no rules. It's about play, experimentation, and the joy of making something out of "nothing." By tearing, crumpling, staining, and layering, you are not just sticking paper to a page; you are infusing it with your own story and touch.
Your challenge now is simple: pick one of these techniques. Just one. Grab the nearest envelope or flyer, and give it a try. Don't worry about the outcome; focus on the process. Feel the paper change in your hands. Watch how a simple action can create a complex and beautiful texture.
We'd love to see what you create! Share your junk mail journal art on social media and tag our blog so we can celebrate your creativity. Which technique are you most excited to try first? Let us know in the comments below
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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