Scrapbooking expands into paperless world

By Brittny Goodsell Jones

February 28, 2008 | An average of 50 pages are housed in each scrapbook and 19 scrapbooks live on my bookshelf. What does that mean to all you non-scrapbookers?

You're 1,000 pages behind me.

I carry my camera to college hockey games, to funerals and to school. I take pictures of the Logan inversion, of journalism group projects, and of my 1993 mini-van I am destined to drive until its black exhaust kills me. People call me up after weddings or barbeques "just to see if I can get a picture double of the shot in front of the house. We all looked so cute!" My creation time-line averages six months to one scrapbook, which roughly means every fourth day of my life has been recorded in snapshots and glued into a scrapbook.

I never used to be obsessive-compulsive about scrapbooking. Before 1988, there were only four main colors to scrapbook with. I know this because my mom used pink, blue, green and yellow for my own scrapbook back in 1982 and could only buy the correct paper at a store in Spanish Fork, Utah.

But scrapbooking has exploded mostly in the last decade as more people use their creative juices to make mass products that go beyond pink, blue, green and yellow paper. Now, products include things like word rub-ons, stamps, stickers, paper patterns, books, cutters, brads, beads, embellishments, and eyelets. I still don't know what an eyelet is and I've been doing this since 2000.

The scrapbooking industry, which some have said started in the United States with Marielen Christensen's Spanish Fork store, is now in a universe of blogging, groups, e-bay users and conventions. The Internet has made this hobby international, with scrapbook stores across the world. But there's no need to drive to buy products -- now, computer savvy scrapbookers have turned to digital sites to do the work for them. There are programs like Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Web sites like Free Digital Scrapbooking that give a scrapbooker free product downloads. These places also give people options to design their own pages and products. Other programs offer detailed backdrops and cut-outs that a scrapbook store doesn't. And creating digital pages is often quicker than using paper products.

But even with the advantages, the pull of the digital world is not enough for some scrapbookers to lay down their scissors and tape.

Melissa Davis, local scrapbooker for nine years, said she feels like digital scrapbooking takes away a humanistic feel to the final product.

"Scrapbooking with paper records your flaws and your trials making that page," Davis, who has 15 scrapbooks, said.

Although Davis has never tried digital scrapbooking, she said she has experienced a bit with photo editing software and has watched other friends do it.

"I feel like I'm constantly being inundated by technology, so it's a way for me to escape that and do something hands-on," Davis said. "Because I teach online, I am on the computer a lot, so I get so sick of it after a while. If I did digital scrapbooking I don't think it would be as much of a release."

Davis said an advantage of paper scrapbooking is getting other "scrappers" together easily and meeting once a month to spend an evening making pages. Her club meets twice a month, she said, and they rotate who hosts the group. Everyone brings a treat to share and scrapbooking supplies become community as they are passed around the table. Davis said these parties can start at 6 p.m. and sometimes go as late as 2 a.m.

"We just chat about what's going on in our lives, and laugh and have fun," Davis said. "It takes a common hobby and brings us all together, and even though our personalities are really different, it helps us all have something to talk about."

Although digital scrapbooking clubs exist, Davis said she thinks they would be a challenge because there would have to be enough room to accommodate laptops, printers, cords and extra tables.

"I think the one thing that is missing is having everyone just lay out all their supplies and trade stamps and supplies and swap ideas," Davis said. "The pages I create there are almost a community effort because I'll borrow one girl's stamps, and another girl will help me with my layout. It would be much harder to create that on the digital level."

Melissa Derr, member of the Google group rec.crafts.scrapbook, said she believes scrapbooking in a group is the new quilter's circle of the 21st century.

Derr, who lives in Seattle, said she does not like digital scrapbooking because it feels too polished and too commercialized. When she looks through a scrapbook made by hand, she said she is viewing something special because she can see the creative conception and planning that went into details.

"I can only imagine the hours that this person must have put into the album, a large album truly can be hundred of hours," Derr said. "Historically there has been given more weight to things we do manually. If someone did it with their 'own hands' it is special. We can recognize that someone has a unique skill."

"There are no flaws that say, 'Hey, look at me, someone made me,'" Derr said. "(But) I can see the blood, sweat and tears that a person puts into an (paper) album. I can see their handwriting and recognize it instantly. There is no perfection, there will be flaws and those flaws make it special."

A flaw that some scrapbookers call a strength is their handwriting. Although they tend to be more coarse and unsophisticated than computer fonts, a person's handwriting leaves a mark of genealogy on a scrapbook page, Derr said.

"Seeing someone's handwriting on a page of a lost loved one can bring that person back for a moment," she said.

ScoutLady, another member of the Google group, said she does both paper and digital scrapbooking. But when it comes to her preference, she said she prefers the paper layouts because of the textures and the depth that digital pages can only try to mimic.

"To me, it is a bit like seeing the Statue of David," ScoutLady said. "I saw photos of it many times but seeing it in front of me in three dimension was so much more visually pleasing and exciting."

A reason paper scrapbooking is such a reward for Shannon, Google group member, is because it's an event to go to a scrapbook store and browse through the aisles, she said. And being able to use tools like glue and scissors is therapeutic, Shannon said.

But when it comes down to it, scrapbooking is about preserving a memory. Cindy Reid, paper scrapbooker for ten years, said this is one hobby that has "snowballed" out of control since she started. Reid said scrapbooking helps her save the stories of her family, including pictures of her ancestors from the 1990s. Since her mom passed away this last Christmas, Reid said scrapbooking has been therapeutic for her. She also has a son serving in Iraq and scrapbooking his photos he sends to her if a way to cope with having him so far away, Reid said.

Whether digital or paper, scrapbooking lends itself to preserving life. But paper scrapbooking is bit more honest since it shows its true colors in a humanistic form. So, I will keep my flaws, thank you.

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