Scrapbooking Counter Culture

My dear sweet husband has been very supportive of my scrapbooking habit because he doesn't consider the money I spend on it as "frivolous" since it preserves our pictures. (Bless his heart) As I said in a previous post, I've been scrapbooking on and off for years (of course I'm now mostly "on" with the birth of Toot). Ironically, I got into scrapbooking with the thought that I wasn't creative enough to do it. My friend invited me to a Creative Memories party where I brought some of my own photos and was shown how to crop them. Then I was given one page, a triangle-shaped piece of paper as well as a strip size piece of paper. I arranged my pictures, taped them to the page and viola! My first layout was complete! It wasn't the fanciest thing: it didn't have any stickers, inks or paints but I was so proud of that page and how easy it was to do that I showed it to everyone for weeks after that party. And thus, a new hobby was born...

That was about 8 or 9 years ago. Once I got married in 2007, I really started scrapbooking a lot. One book for the wedding, one book for our honeymoon (Disneyworld). Then I became pregnant and it was on! Again, my layouts were never fancy, mostly one solid color background sheet, my cropped pictures and stickers. I like to use a lot of photos in my layouts because I take so many photos and want to make sure I include them all. I have to admit, I thought I was one hot scrapbooker. Then at various craft stores, I started noticing strange things like scrapbooking "punches", "stickles", "thickers" and "chipboard".

Say I've been living in a bubble, but I really had no idea until recently how much fancy pants scrapbooking stuff there is out there! Blogs, forums, layout swaps, ink techniques, paper flowers, even "scrapbook kit" clubs! There's a whole fabulous online world of people connecting through sharing ways to build a better mouse trap...or in this case, create a better photo album. Some find it relaxing, others use it to inspire or teach others and most are just plain addicted to it.

What I have discovered is that whether you have the latest scrapbooking "bling" or use simple plain paper and stickers and whether or not you think you're creative, the end result is still the same: you're working to document your history, your story. You are creating something that will be handed down through generations. These scrapbooks are how others will get to know you, what and who you loved when you are long gone. That is the essence of scrapbooking.

Keep on rolling (and scrapbooking),

Katamommy