There’s an interesting article today at the Salt Lake City Tribune. Writer Linda Fantin raises the issue of scrapbooking’s history. As you know, scrapbooking began as a way of collecting memories or pictures that had meaning to the individual. My earliest scrapbook, for example, contained glued-in pictures of Elvis Presley cut from magazines and embellished with big red hand-drawn hearts. I was 13, okay?
Early scrapbookers had no modern day supplies. Instead, they made do with what they had, producing layouts that today’s scrapbookers would sniff at, but nevertheless, layouts that were meaningful and significant.
Fontin asks whether those early scrapbook pages may have been more authentic, more meaningful than the ones we produce today, given our huge array of mass produced supplies, tools and embellishments.
She has a point. I look at a small chipboard album I made recently from a kit. The kit contained the album and a set of fully coordinated papers, stickers, alphabets, borders and embellishments. All I had to do was supply the photographs and throw the whole thing together. I have to ask, “How much of myself was really in that scrapbook?”
And the answer is, “Not much”. Just the photographs, which had my personal touch since I edited them in Photoshop before printing them out.
I compare this with an album I made when I had just started scrapbooking (the modern way, not the Elvis variety). The manager of our local craft store helped me get started with my first project. Even though she managed a scrapbook store, this woman had a personal policy of using only embellishments that she had created herself in her personal layouts. Her memory albums were lovely and totally unique. Each and every item was crafted by hand, a special memory in and of themselves. I remember a beautiful mermaid embellishment that she made by hand using the paper piercing and paper cutting technique It was the perfect enhancement in her Hawaiian vacation album.
This woman’s style influenced me considerably. In my earlier albums, I adopted the same practice, and made most of my own embellishments. When I look at those scrapbooks now, I feel a sense of ownership that just isn’t there when I look at the album made from the kit that I described above.
Nevertheless, although my personal preference definitely runs towards hand made embellishments and personally matched papers and products, I see a role for the commercial items as well.
It depends entirely on what you want to produce. The kits save time. There is no doubt about it. Additionally, they are usually aesthetically appealing, with little to no skill required from the scrapbooker to make them that way. Sometimes you just want to put a scrapbook together fast, for some special purpose — and time is important. That was the case with the kit I used. I wanted to complete an album in a weekend so I could give it for a birthday gift.
I can well imagine that many scrapbookers are busy people, perhaps moms with more pictures than time, and to these scrapbookers, the kits and ready made embellishments are lifesavers.
On the other hand, the crafters who consider themselves “scrapartists” regard matching their own products and creating their designs and embellishments as an important component of their art.
There’s no right or wrong here – just different approaches to scrapbooking and different goals. I use both approaches, depending on my need and purpose.
What’s your approach? Leave a comment and share your story.
