The last few weeks, I have been watching my mother scrapbook pictures from the last few years. It got me questioning ‘Do people even scrapbook anymore?’
For those that do not know what scrapbooking, it is basically making a picture book of your life with cutesy extra cut outs on colorful papers.
Heck, you can even have themes for what you are going to scrapbook about. The one my mother just made looks at my college pictures so far, or at least what pictures we have of them.
What happened to be a large craze in the early 90s, scrapbooking took off by storm. I remember from the late 90s and early 2000’s, I would always be going into these stores specifically for the craft.
And as it was an obsession of my mother’s, I would sometimes be in a store for over three hours because people even made classes for this.
Why these classes were so important? I will never know. But I remember that I was allowed to cut a lot of shapes, as uneven as my lines were. Then again, most of the stuff I cut was probably stuff my mother or her friends could not use. It kept me occupied, that is for sure.
But these scrapbooking classes were not the epitome of the scrapboking craze. You had scrabooking parties. What? Did I just say what you think I said? Yes, I said scrapbooking parties.
Women like my mom would just meet up as a group at a selected house at some day of the week. Food was usually a potluck and bring your own beverage. Of course, I usually was dragged along by my mother. But while they were scrapbooking, I was stuck with several other kids watching a movie. (From what I can remember, I think I fell asleep twice.)
While us kids were occupied, they would talk, eat, and scrapbook the night away. And when they scrapbooked, they would get a book completed in five hours.
Be afraid of scrapbookers on a mission. They get stuff done.
She had to make sure there was all the right paper, stickers, and scissor to make each page look great – since once something was placed, it was harder to move around.
Perfectionism was and still is encouraged in this dying art. Supply wise, gel pens could make or break a page.
With what memories are placed in these books, I know for a fact my mother saved (almost) every memento of my childhood – including my first tooth.
Wait, not only did she keep my first tooth, but she also kept a snippet of my umbilical cord. Gross! But what can I do, my mother saves absolutely everything – no matter how disgusting I find it. (At least I know I only have to see it once in a blue moon.)
But as social media continues to grow bigger, any time in making scrapbooks has just been becoming more obsolete while the books themselves collect dust.
There are not that many people that want to just take these pictures, develop them, and then put them into a book for the future.
Just uploading them to a social network is easier and it lets everyone see your life with dates included (most of the time)! And there happens to be no mess.
Despite the decline in scrapbooking due to social media, I still appreciate the time, effort, and love my mother put into documenting my life in pictures within volumes of these books.
I would rather take the time to look page by page at these old pictures than scrolling down a page of pictures that are just there.
Hey, maybe one day I will take the time to make a scrapbook of my own.
Brittany Klyczek
Deputy Editor in Chief