Okay folks… after spending last night at a wedding and having soooo many people ask me about scrapbooking — you know, what is that? What does acid-free mean? Why does anyone need “scrapbooking supplies”? Okay, they didn’t ask me all those questions and it was only one person who just never heard of scrapbooking, but the point here is that there are still people in this universe who are unfamiliar with the whole scrapbooking concept. After that, I felt it necessary to explain to those interested parties.
So, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version. (You remember those, don’t you? They’re what you bought in high school when you had a big exam on Shakespeare’s MacBeth and you didn’t even bother to purchase the book. Anyway…) Scrapbooking is a multi-BILLION dollar industry (according to Forbes Magazine and other sources). It began with a woman with a vision.
All right, all right. I won’t go there. Let me just put it down in layman’s terms. Remember how you wanted to buy a digital camera and you weren’t sure which one to buy? I mean, you want to get the best value for your money and you want the device to capture those special moments the best way possible. No pixels in the pics, full color, no distortions and easy to use. So you spend some time looking around, asking around and doing a bit of research for the camera that best suits you.
Then you make your purchase and boy are you happy! It cost a couple hundred dollars, but that’s okay. You’ve got a state of the art moment capturing device in your hands. The kids aren’t allowed to come within a 10 foot radius of this perfect piece of machinery, let alone touch it, for fear they may break it. You want it to last because this is the li’l guy who’s going to help you keep your memories alive!
Well, if you’re going to put that much energy into a camera, why wouldn’t you put a little energy into preserving what comes out of that camera? Afterall, isn’t that the point — remembering the moment and passing on the stories to your children. Instead, you upload the pics into your computer, saved in a labelled folder (hopefully) for future reference to find them easily yet they’re never looked at again.
When was the last time you visited a friend when they returned from their trip to China and they said, “hey! Wanna see some pics?” And you both ran to the computer to view her photos from her recent vacation? If anything, she at least had them printed so she could show them to people (or not and then no one saw them). But then they went into a box or drawer somewhere and again were never viewed again.
About 20 years later, while doing a little cleaning up, she comes across the pictures and they’ve turned orange perhaps yellow, even orange-yellow. They’re a bit faded, but hey! Those pics sure do bring back memories, huh?
I’ve got news for you! Forget the frills and colored paper and even all the knick-knacks out there enhancing the hobby of scrapbooking. Putting your pictures in an organized fashion into a photo album just makes good sense. The albums (and materials used for scrapbooking) need to be acid and lignin free to protect the life of your photo. That means the colors will stay true longer and the photo paper won’t become brittle and tear/crumble easily. For a more detailed explanation of the terms acid-free and lignin free, read about it here.
And that folks is what scrapbooking is all about!
The arts & craftsy page layouts in the albums are just the fun hobby of scrapbooking. But ultimately, we scrapbook because we want to preserve our precious photos for our grandchildren’s grandchildren to view and learn about their family and heritage.
