I’m not sure exactly when I started “scrapbooking” by the current industry definition, but I know I have been memory keeping in one form or another most of my life. When I was born, my aunt made me a scrapbook with articles, current events and newspaper clippings from my birth date. I love pulling it out and looking at it every so often. My mother documented my first year in pictures, organizing them by month in magnetic albums and kept a baby book where she wrote notes and pasted mementos.
I remember as an adolescent collecting magazine articles, photos and other interesting tidbits and keeping them in a three ring binder. I loved pouring over the pictures of models and my favorite actors and collecting skin care and make-up tips. As my interests changed, so did the items that ended up in my binder.
In 1988, another aunt gave me a blank book for Christmas and I began keeping a written journal. I wrote in it faithfully, mostly about what boy I liked, or what my friends and I were doing that weekend, but it was a habit I developed that carried through the rest of my life. I have stacks and stacks of written journals, chronicling all of the important periods of my life. I will often look back and find passages written in times of turmoil, that I have no recollection writing, but at the time, provided some much needed emotional catharsis.
In 1996, I was twenty, and my paternal grandfather passed away suddenly. It was my first experience with personal loss. As part of our mourning process, my dad and I worked on a “eulogy book” containing family pictures, letters written from family members and copies of the speeches given at his memorial. That was probably my first “scrapbook”.
I’ve always had an affinity for paper and office supplies. While I was in college, I often organized my projects in books with decorated cover pages, laminated and spiral bound. I probably spent more time on the presentation of my papers than I did actually writing them. In 1998, my niece was born and in the spirit of the scrapbook my aunt made me, I made her an album with articles and current events on her birth date. I included her infant portrait, used a scanner and word processing program to scan and print the articles and laminated and spiral bound it.
A few months later, my cousin went to a Creative Memories party. She wasn’t too in to it herself, so knowing my love of paper markers and the like, she bought me some things for Christmas. I started dabbling with the tools, cutting my pictures into circles and ovals and matting them with card stock cut to match. I started perusing Michael’s picking up some pattern paper and stickers. When my stepdaughter came to visit for a few weeks in the summer, I documented her trip and sent her home with an album of her adventures. It was 8 1/2 x 11 and I had it bound at Kinko’s.
Shortly after I started getting into scrapbooking as a hobby, I was deployed with my Army Reserve unit to Kuwait, where I spent a year living in a tent in the desert. It was 2003, and online shopping was just becoming available on a wide scale. About six months into my deployment, I had internet access and found some online shops that would ship to an APO address. I ordered a camp album, 8 1/2 x 11 paper, a glue stick, scissors, a ruler and a craft knife. I had a laptop and a small printer and printed my titles backwards on the back of pattern paper and then cut them out with a craft knife. Sometimes it would take me an hour for one title, but in my downtime, there wasn’t much else to do anyway. I scrapped the photos of family my mom sent from the states. I took pictures of my fellow soldiers, my camp and my living area with a disposal camera I bought at the PX and had them developed when I could get into town. I asked my mom to send me some scrapbooking magazines and she sent me some copies of Creating Keepsakes. I devoured them while I sat up in the tower on guard duty, usually with a flashlight. I had finally found a hobby that combined all the things I loved.
For the next few years, I worked on finding my way back into civilian life. There were houses bought and sold, jobs lost and gained and several moves. I continued to journal, and keep track of events in my calendar, but I didn’t too much actual paper scrapbooking. When I became pregnant with my daughter and my mom threw me a baby shower, I made a 12 x 12 scrapbook of the photos and cards from the shower. I made an 8x8 album of my belly photos and preparing the nursery and kept the hospital ephemera in there.
When my daughter was born in 2006, I knew I wanted to document her life, so I started scrapbooking her photos in 12x12 format. I had a pink post bound album, and I journaled on my computer and printed it out. When she was about six months old, I quit my job to be a stay at home mom and our little family moved back to my home town to be closer to family. My husband, an Army Reservist for ten years, went on Active Duty to support us while I raised our daughter.
Finding myself with tons of scrap worthy material and more time to devote to it, I immersed myself in the hobby. I read every magazine I could get my hands on and frequented the Creating Keepsakes website. I turned the large walk-in closet in my hallway into my tiny scrap room and filled it with pattern paper, stickers and embellishments. I was in my glory.
I continued to scrap my daughter’s life, but I was probably the world’s slowest scrapper, sometimes taking days to complete a layout. I would move things all over the page, agonizing over each and every detail. When I discovered Photoshop templates on the Creating Keepsakes website, I started organizing my photos in templates and then printing them out in blocks for my layouts. I was hybrid scrapbooking without even knowing it.
I made many gift albums, in different sizes, some 12 x 12 albums, some mini albums from scratch. I was doing a lot of other things in my personal and professional life, but I always managed to work scrapbooking into it. In 2010, I went to my first Creating Keepsakes convention and took some classes. I was introduced to Tim Holtz Distress products and numerous other wonderful new things, and realized there was so much more to the art of memory keeping and paper crafting than just scrapbooks.
When a friend I met at a mom’s group invited me to a crop at her house, I discovered there were other people in my area that scrapbooked too. I looked forward to the few fund-raising crops that were held each year to spend time with other crafty people. I delved deeper into the hobby, staying abreast of current trends, trying them all and keeping the ones I loved. I listened to podcasts about scrapbooking, read the magazines, until they all slowly disappeared, and started watching YouTube videos.
The more I learned and the more I tried, the more confident of a scrapbooker I became. I was so passionate about the hobby that I wanted to make it more than just a hobby. I was determined to find a way to spread the love of scrapbooking to the world and turn my hobby into a job. I was convinced that if I did what I loved, eventually it would pay off. I wanted to open a scrapbook store, but my business background told me that I had to do my research first. I started by getting myself a business license, and setting up wholesale accounts with vendors. I asked if I could vend at one of the biggest crops of the year and was granted permission.
My original business model was outrageous. I wanted to teach classes, sell products, host birthday parties and showers, make invitations, cards and albums. It was ridiculous, and I recognized that fact pretty early on and tried to scale it down and focused on selling product and teaching classes. But without a permanent venue, it was difficult to do either of these things.
I continued to set up at crops and teach make-and-take classes to inspire people to buy the products I carried and occasionally held sales at my house. By this time, I realized that the population of my town could in no way support an actual brick and mortar store, so I focused on building a website. I worked on trying to start a blog, make YouTube videos and free content for download. I bought membership in the Craft and Hobby Association and even attended two trade shows. I was doing everything but what I loved most- scrapbooking.
As the opportunities to set up for crops became fewer and fewer, I started scaling down my inventory and trying to get rid of what I had. I stayed on the fence for a long time, clinging to whatever I could, insisting I wan’t going to give it up, but when my husband received orders to relocate and we decided as a family to move with him, I finally let go of the dream to own my a scrapbooking business and sold my remaining inventory and displays. As difficult as it was, it was also very liberating. I no longer had to worry about designing make-and-takes, classes, ordering, keeping records, doing taxes…I could just enjoy the hobby the way I loved it.
Now that is exactly what I am doing. I am enjoying being a memory keeper. I still keep up with the industry trends and who is doing what, but I do it because I love it, not because I feel like I have to. I am still blogging about scrapbooking, but mostly because I love to look back at my blog and see what I was doing and any point in time; it’s just another form of memory keeping for me. I recently started digital scrapbooking and that has opened up a whole new world of possibilities too. If I do a video, or write a tutorial or class its because I love it and I want to share the gift of this hobby with the world. And I’m having the most fun ever.
Scrapbooking is still my first love, and probably my biggest passion, but I also dabble in all types of paper crafting and art making. I make mini albums, cards, canvases and I occasionally art journal. I enjoy home decor and love to make my daughter’s Halloween costumes. I especially love making hand made gifts. I think there is something extra special about taking the time to give a totally unique present tailored to the recipient. I don’t think anything store bought could ever rival the impact of a personal, hand crafted gift.
I love memory keeping- documenting my family’s lives, making connections between the past and the present and preserving my story is not just a hobby for me. It is part of my life and my passion. It helps me see the world differently and has opened my eyes to so much more than I ever would have noticed without the benefit of all that I’ve gained by being a scrapbooker.
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