Vintage Mushroom Ephemera + What to Put in Your Art Journal
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What to Put in Your Art Journal: Inspiring Ideas and Printable Ephemera to Get You Started + Free Vintage Mushroom Ephemera
Whether you're a seasoned art journaler or just getting started, one of the most common questions is: What should I actually put in my art journal? The beauty of art journaling is that there's no single “right” answer. Your journal is your personal, creative playground—part sketchbook, part diary, part collage, and part mystery box of inspiration.
At The Art Scavenger, I specialize in offering free vintage printables designed to help you build beautiful, layered journal pages without overthinking the process. Today, I'm diving into creative ideas for what to include in your art journal, and how printable ephemera can help you get started.
About the Mushroom Printables
Before we start talking about art journaling, let’s go over the free ephemera sheets I’m giving away on this page. Do you happen to remember these botanical picture atlas collage sheets I gave away a while back? Well, that 1911 atlas also had a section on mushrooms with these lovely pages of illustrations.
Scroll down, and you’ll find three different sheets of vintage mushroom illustrations for you to cut up and add to your journal spreads and other artwork and crafts, or use the whole sheet as a background in your junk journal, scrapbook, etc.
Now, let’s talk art journaling…
Creative Art Journaling Ideas
Personal Touches – Start with You
The most powerful art journals start with the artist themselves. Even if you’re just dabbling, your voice is what makes your journal special.
Ideas to Try:
Daily Thoughts & Musings: Jot down a line or two about your day. Even a mundane moment can spark inspiration when paired with a striking image or color.
Quotes & Affirmations: Add a favorite quote or positive affirmation to guide your mindset.
Handwriting & Doodles: Let your own script become a design element—write big, write small, or write in circles!
Ephemera Tip:
Try printing out our vintage apothecary label printables or this vintage labels ephemera. They create a beautiful base for your handwritten reflections and affirmations. Use aged paper or distressed textures as backgrounds to frame your writing.
Visual Storytelling with Ephemera
Art journaling is a unique way to tell stories without writing a single sentence. Vintage ephemera is perfect for creating little narrative scenes, sparking memories, or building your own visual world.
Ideas to Try:
Theme Pages: Create a spread around a mood or era—like Victorian travel, old Parisian postcards, or a 1900s millinery shop.
Memory Collage: Use vintage illustrations, stamps, and photographs to recreate a favorite memory or dream one up.
Found Photos: Vintage portraits and postcards can become characters in your own imagined tales.
Ephemera Tip:
My free vintage photograph printables, French postcard collage sheets, and vintage hat ephemera sheets are ideal for this.
Nature & Botanical Inspirations
There’s something inherently grounding about nature-inspired journaling. Mushrooms, florals, feathers, and leaves remind us to slow down and notice the beauty around us.
Ideas to Try:
Field Notes: Create a faux naturalist’s notebook, using sketches, pressed (or printed) plants, and little observations from your garden or walks.
Seasonal Botanicals: Chronicle how the seasons change with printable flora—think spring violets, autumn leaves, winter holly.
Mood Reflections: Match botanical elements to your emotions. Calm days might be soft ferns; stormy moods, dramatic roses.
Ephemera Tip:
You’re in the perfect spot. The mushroom collage sheets on this page are ideal for this! Print them on matte paper, cut them out, and use them to anchor a nature-themed spread. Pair them with my poisonous plant sheets or my floral tags and tickets collage sheet for a lush, old-world botanical vibe.
Collage & Mixed Media Experiments
One of the most freeing things about art journaling is how many mediums you can combine. This is where printable ephemera really shines. Cut, tear, paint, paste—let your instincts lead.
Ideas to Try:
Textured Layers: Combine paint splashes, tissue paper, and printables.
Typography Play: Use letters and alphabets as design elements—build words or scatter random characters.
Abstract Assemblage: Let go of themes. Just layer textures, shapes, and ephemera pieces that feel right.
Ephemera Tip:
My vintage alphabet book image sheets are great for typography collages. And if you’re in the mood for something mysterious, try my vintage owl portrait printables. They add a moody focal point to any abstract spread.
Seasonal & Themed Pages
Holidays, personal milestones, and changing seasons offer great prompts for your journal. These spreads often turn into time capsules that are especially fun to revisit later.
Ideas to Try:
Holiday Spreads: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day—any season is fair game! Use themed ephemera to set the tone.
Monthly Recaps: Use the same format each month (a quote, a photo, a favorite moment) to build a visual calendar.
Celebration Pages: Highlight a birthday, anniversary, or random magical day with layers of decorative paper and embellishments.
Ephemera Tip:
Download some of my Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Easter collage sheets. You can also use my months of the year printables or a date stamp to timestamp your work without handwriting it.
Bonus Section: Printable Ideas Just for You
I’ve created a library of free vintage printables at The Art Scavenger that are perfect for every type of art journaler, from the minimalist to the maximalist. Here are a few printable sets to explore next:
Vintage Fashion Plate Journal Cards: Perfect for fashion or self-expression spreads.
Butterfly Collage Ephemera: A charming addition to nature pages.
Floral Label Printables: For labeling sections, writing thoughts, or adding visual breaks.
You can find all of these and more under my Collage Sheets section.
Final Thoughts: Let Your Journal Evolve
Your art journal isn’t supposed to be perfect, it’s supposed to be yours. Some days it might be bursting with color and collage, and other days, just a few words and a single mushroom illustration. That’s the magic.
Don’t be afraid to start small. A single cut-out mushroom, a meaningful quote, a scribble of watercolor is enough. Over time, those little moments build into something beautiful and personal.
Let your journal be your sanctuary. And whenever you’re looking for inspiration, I’ll be here with more free printables treasures waiting to be found.
Happy journaling!
More about the Mushroom Printables:
I know I post a lot of mushroom collage sheets, but they are always very popular, and there are a lot of great reasons to use mushrooms in journaling. Mushroom illustrations often possess a whimsical and enchanting quality that appeals to many artists and journalers. The intricate details, vibrant colors, and unique shapes of mushrooms make them visually captivating and lend themselves well to creative compositions.
Mushroom illustrations are great for nature-inspired themes that are popular in art journaling and junk journaling. They evoke a sense of the natural world, forests, and the beauty of the outdoors.
Mushrooms hold symbolic meanings and metaphors that can be incorporated into journaling. For example, mushrooms are often associated with growth, transformation, and the cycle of life due to their rapid and ephemeral growth patterns. Artists may use mushroom illustrations to explore these themes or convey personal narratives and emotions.
Vintage mushroom illustrations from the 19th and early 20th centuries like these possess a nostalgic and timeless quality. They can add a vintage touch to art journaling and junk journaling projects, giving them a unique and antique aesthetic that appeals to those who appreciate the beauty of vintage artwork.
Mushroom illustrations offer versatility in terms of their placement and usage in journaling. They can be used as standalone focal points, background elements, or incorporated into collages, providing artists with various options for incorporating them into their journaling pages.
Many artists and journalers have a genuine fascination with mushrooms. They may find joy in collecting and studying mushroom illustrations, incorporating them into their creative projects as a way to express their personal interests and passions.
You may also enjoy these free collage sheets.
Terms of use:
Free to use for personal or commercial projects. You may print the collage sheets as many times as you wish for your personal crafts or in your projects to sell, including: art journals, scrapbooks, junk journals, collage art, etc. You may not redistribute or sell the collage sheets “as is" in either print or digital form.
If you wish to share the files on your own website, please do not make the files available for download directly from your site. Instead, include an image with a link back to this site.
To the best of my knowledge, these are all royalty free images that are in the Public Domain in the US. However, you should always do your own research if you plan to use them commercially.
