Daily Ephemera Collection List for Journaling

My Daily Ephemera Workshop Poster collage is composed of: map pieces, wrapping paper, magazine images, old hand written letters, bus transfer, political flyer, calendar fragment, scrapbook paper, alphabet stickers, words from poetry book, legend of shopping mall map and Dymo tape writer. Text is inspired by a pop song, Twilight movie soundtrack lyric, Mayan legend and astrological signs.

This year, in my Practical Guide to Journaling Workshop I’ll be teaching students how to make a daily ephemera journal page.  Simply speaking, I like to think of daily ephemera as the stuff of life… bits and pieces of things that give physical evidence of our daily life, thoughts and routines… through them, we can discover who we are and the context we’re living in.

During my research of daily ephemera journal pages, I never ran across an exhaustive list of materials I could give to students… so I made one of my own!  Here it is for those of you who take delight in detailed lists!

– Used Tickets from: bus (bus transfers), airplane, train, ski hill, concert, movie, etc.
– Used Lottery or scratch tickets
– Copies of photos of yourself; photos taken at a photo booth
– Used bus pass photos or other old ID pictures
– Tags from things you buy like clothing; even buttons that have fallen off
– Business cards with cool graphics/images, brochures or flyers from stores or public events you frequent
– Pieces of used maps or architectural layout or plan (ie. city, mall sports arena, house); alternately you could draw your own layouts of places real or imagined (ie. a virtual gaming one or a memory of an old home)
– Set of instructions from furniture you put together (ie. IKEA)
– Old greeting cards or postcards, stamps, envelopes (window envelopes from bills are great, too)
– Wrapping paper, packaging paper, tissue paper with store logos
– Fortunes from fortune cookies, paper mats from restaurants
– Labels, box covers from anything you buy (ie. gum wrappers, candy bar wrappers, your favourite grocery items packaging (ie. cereal, cookie, granola bar boxes, etc.) Note: these can’t be glossy on both sides; must be matte surface on one side so you can glue them
– Logos of paper shopping bags or mall food shops (ie. AE, Tim’s, Starbucks, etc.)
– Any kind of sticker or label
– Shopping Receipts
– Founds papers (ie. someone’s old grocery list)
– Old handwritten recipes or even copies of them would be great
– Clip out your horoscope
– Old calendars
– Images and Words from magazines, brochures, fashion/restaurant flyers or local newspapers
– Drawings, doodles, artwork (yours or someone else’s)
– Yellow sticky notes to yourself or from others (ie, parents, friends, etc.)
– Sentences, images or diagrams cut out of used books

Additional Collecting Criteria: Anything flat is great.  If items are stained, torn or wrinkled that’s even better… it gives them more character!

Stay tuned next week when I post some examples of daily ephemera pages I’ve been working on.  Above is a poster I made for Sir Wilfred Laurier High School for a daily ephemera journaling workshop I’ll be giving there in a couple of weeks.  If you’d like to add to my list, I’d be happy to hear from you!

Other Related Links:
Creating Collage Using Daily Life Ephemera
Collage Tip # 7 (Part 1): Going Gaga for Magazine Textures