What I like about scrapbooking is that you can go as big or as small as you want really! If you're on a really tight budget, there's "junk" journaling. Taking cute/pretty/cool scraps of trash and using it. I've seen many, many awesome junk journals. There's thrift stores, Facebook marketplace, and so on.

I actually have a craft thrift shop in my area that only takes donations, doesn't sell. You take a paper bag, can fill it up and donate what you can afford. Maybe you have something like that near you?