The Death of the Souvenir — and the Rise of "Memory Collecting"

Last year was Ramisha Sattar's "year of side quests." While she was busy making a name for herself as Chappell Roan's one-of-a-kind creative director, she also did a last-minute trek around Machu Picchu (so last-minute that she did it in ballet flats); attended the Grammys on the arm of her pop-star collaborator, who was also the night's biggest underdog VIP; and capped things off in December with a monthlong excursion through India alongside another of her closest friends.

It was a year of so much new adventure and time-zone whiplash that she found herself turning to an old hobby that's been keeping her grounded and creatively challenged for years: scrapbooking. In particular, Sattar, who goes by Misha in the 3D world and mishaspice on Instagram, came home from her month in India with two scrapbooks so full she could barely close them — fat with all matter of receipts, notes, wrappers, clippings, and stickers, layered together and laid out in strikingly beautiful spreads.

"I scrapbook a lot day to day, but this one was unique because I actually was not even planning to scrapbook in India," she tells PS. "The only things we packed were a glue stick and three washi tapes. Everything else was like, well, we'll just have to get creative with it."

Early into the trip, she decided she would start asking strangers for little doodles or autographs, which she then layered with stamps and block print patterns, plus fabric scraps and ticket stubs. It's a type of free-form scrapbooking that the internet has dubbed junk journaling, or "memory collecting." Critics of the practice might say it's just hoarding for hot girls, and they wouldn't be totally wrong. "There's definitely moments where I'll save something that looks like trash and my friends will be like, girl, why are you taking that?" Sattar says. "And I'm like, trust the vision."

Call it what you want, but this particular "granny hobby" has captivated Gen Z, no longer satisfied with digital "scrapbooks" like TikTok and Instagram. As a near TikTok ban exposed early this year, the fragility of social media means that all a person's carefully curated memories can disappear with the stroke of one man's pen.

Lizzie Russo is a print expert and the senior brand manager at Nations Photo Lab.

This generation's coolest art girls all seem to agree: These precious recollections deserve a more permanent home, something real and more personal, that one can hold onto forever. So they're revisiting their favorite analog craft and giving it a thoroughly modern treatment — scrapping the rules and stale templates of scrapbooks' past in favor of a more improvised, eclectic style.

"There's a collective craving for something tangible," artist Martina Calvi tells PS. She published "The Art of Memory Collecting," a book with 15 paper craft-starters, in 2024. "We live in such a digital world, where hundreds of photos disappear into camera rolls we rarely look at again. Old-school hobbies like scrapbooking bring a sense of slowness, creativity, and hands-on connection that people are missing."

Specific to travel, print expert Lizzie Russo says memory collectors hold onto everything from maps to luggage tags, hotel stationery, brochures, local postage stamps, and clothing tags. Pressed flowers or leaves, food packaging, and tea bags are considered great finds too, Russo says. These crafters "feel free to get a bit unconventional with mementos because a piece of a paper bag, a snippet of local newspaper, or a bit of sand glued into the corner of a page can add texture and really help bring those travel memories back to life."

It's exactly that freedom that most excites Calvi about this kind of collage: The only limit is what can fit on one page.

"Memory collecting and junk journaling have evolved from traditional scrapbooking in a way that feels even more accessible and personal. There are absolutely no rules," Calvi says. "Whether it's just pasting in junk or using your favorite stickers, it's just as much about creative expression and finding beauty in imperfection."

Like Sattar, Calvi is an avid memory collector when she travels. She replied to my email from Bali, where she had been staying for several weeks. By that point, she'd already amassed a collection of coasters and napkins from her favorite cafes and restaurants, plus wrappers and receipts from local products. She planned to spend her last day pasting everything into her journal "while reflecting on the wonderful memories made."

Crafters use their scrapbooks to remember trips after the fact, sure, but they also use them to inform how they interact with new people and places while still on the road. Collecting the different elements for each spread in her India scrapbooks allowed Sattar to deepen her connection to each city she visited, which was extra special considering this was the Nebraska native's first visit to the region. She explored Mumbai, Jaipur, and the district of Kutch, where her Pakistani grandparents lived before the partition of India in 1947.

She wanted to remember "all the little things," so she asked the "randomest" people she met to write her notes and sign their names in her journals. One of Sattar's favorite spreads features a doodle of a monkey, courtesy of one of the guides at Galtaji Temple, or the "monkey temple," in Jaipur. He didn't speak English, and the doodle makes her smile remembering how he managed to communicate his love of the monkeys without spoken language.

It's been said of Sattar before, but she is literally your favorite artist's favorite artist. The now iconic pop-star image of Chappell Roan was molded with the help of Sattar's silly, gleeful vision. And her obsession with tactile art frequently bleeds over into the Chappell-sphere, like when she designed a set of paper doll inserts for a limited edition "Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess" vinyl.

"Objects mean a lot to me," Sattar says. "I'll keep every note you write. If you've ever given me a little birthday card, I have it. I love to collect and keep little things. Each piece is unique." She and Calvi are real-life pen pals and have spent years sending snail mail back and forth between Sattar's Los Angeles address and Calvi's in Sydney, Australia.

Russo agrees that physical, touchable mementos hold a lot of emotion in them. And travel scrapbooks preserve visceral memories because they highlight the tiniest details about specific moments on a trip, she tells PS. "By saving little keepsakes you're creating a time capsule of your experience."

It used to be that you would buy a souvenir to commemorate a trip. But for memory collectors, the souvenir is the trip itself — and all the fleeting moments that add up to it. "It's often the everyday details, like a handwritten note from a cafe or a crumpled train ticket, that bring back a sense of place much more clearly than a postcard or souvenir you buy," she says.

That said, Sattar is decidedly pro-souvenir. We're talking key chains, charms, and trinkets of all kinds. She loves being a "tacky tourist" (hence the ballet flats at Machu Picchu) and is a sucker for a cheugy souvenir shop. Most recently, she and her friends wandered into one inside a Las Vegas diner. "We kind of lost our minds in there," she says. "There is something so magical about a souvenir store." Sometimes she'll take pictures of souvenirs that she'll later print out and paste into her journals, but this time she decided to buy something: a mood ring. It turned her finger green.

For a once-in-a-lifetime trip like her month in India, though, her only real souvenirs were her journals — so full of texture that they bring her journey to life more vividly than any camera roll full of selfies or store full of cheap (possibly skin-altering) knickknacks ever could.

Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she's covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.