About five years ago someone apparently sold the idea of scrapbooking stores as a business model to young women who wanted to leave the traditional workforce. The things popped up like mushrooms. They are gone now, leaving broken hearts behind... seems scrapbooking isn't fascinating enough to support a dozen dedicated stores in the metro area of Memphis, and with the economy tanking, no one has thirty dollars to spend on a tool that cuts 3/4 inch circles.

Wow, Jessica Helfand needs to lighten up. The beauty of the scrapbook phenomenon is that you bring to the table whatever you want to preserve from your life and it creates a narrative for the future. I've been scrapbooking since I was a kid some thirty plus years ago. I remember when Mrs. Grossman's stickers first came out and I would troll office supply stores collecting the new ones for my stationary and school books. So now I use them in my son's baby and childhood book...big deal. If all of these cool supplies had been available when I was a child, I would have been in creativity heaven. My carefully saved articles about figure skaters and film stars would be better preserved in their acid free pages. Yes, there are women who go waaay overboard on the expensive trims, techniques and tools, and yes, I know a few women who hoard scrapbooking supplies like quilters hoard fabric or knitters hoard yarn, but so what? Women deserve a little beauty, a little color in their life. My scrapbook pages are pretty minimalist, by the way, like my decorating style, but paging through them with my son and talking about his baby days and our family vacations is immensely more satisfying than the shoebox of random childhood photos I grew up with. If nothing else, the scrapbook mania has encouraged many of us to write down family anecdotes and throw out or crop poorly composed or ugly photos. That's a blessing in itself. How many of us have boxes and boxes of unlabeled family photos that will never reveal the stories behind them?

What a nasty person! She reminds me of all the journalists who criticize bloggers for not being "trained writers". Seems like the real value of being "trained" is that you get to look down on anybody who isn't. Quick, somebody call the design police!

Fine, she can criticize all of this but where are her reasons? If you want to be a priggish moralist at least tap into moral reasons for your views. It seems so short-sighted to criticize people for buying, for what they eat, for how they stay happy. It has always gone on. In even ancient Greek times people were overweight, people looked for happiness apart from their marriage, in little crafts, and people (including the author, who I imagine has no background in humanities or she would sound smarter) have always bought crap.

What a mean study. Yes, people are tackier than you. Was that the point?

When I was a young girl money was very tight in my family, so I had paper dolls instead of Barbies, etc.

I am in a different place now, financially and aesthetically, but I live in a community where many people scrapbook, and although I have other interests and outlets for my creativity, I understand and appreciate this hobby.

In fact, I love the meditation of posting pictures of family and friends in photo albums. It has a tactile quality that is reminiscent of that time in my early life when things realy were just that simple- out of necessity, yes, but that wasn't so bad.

I know that scrapbooking is big business, but it retains that uncontrived, unpretentious quality that is so often missing in our lives. It is a truer, less self-conscious version of the habits and hobbies of my wealthier female freinds who dress their little girls in long Laura Ashley dresses and only eat from organic farms.

I chuckle, because I see the similarities, as opposed to the differences, in the lifestyles of my "aesthetically conscious" and more "ordinary" friends.

Ironically, the ones eating the Twinkies are more likely to have grown up on a farm, hauled manure and helped birth a calf. They were members of FFA who attended the annual farm show.

This was not posing as authentic- it was real.

And, yes, they actually appreciate the pleasure of a Little Debbie or Twinkie. They also can fruits and vegetables every year. They make candles. They collect baskets. I find this lifestyle fascinating and often quite beautiful.

Yes, they know they will likely get fat if they eat junk food in excess, but the discipline it takes to scrapbook is the same ethic they often bring to their other pursuits: A good amount, but not too much.

Those scrapbooks are a valuable contribution to America's folk art. Many are just beautiful, and I marvel at the care and artistry that some display.

Here's to scrapbookers!

i'm going to admit it. i scrap, and i blog. in fact, i'm working on a journal about all of my family's activities during december, just like i've done the past few years. it helps me really appreciate the holidays and the people around me. and i'm going to post my journal on my blog, so friends and family can see it too. i buy some stuff for the journal, i make some. whatever. it's an enjoyable pastime and my kids like looking back at previous books. i don't care if anyone else likes what i do. but i get a lot of really nice comments (in person and on my blog) about my stuff.

of course, as soon as i saw the headline for this article, i knew what to expect: a superior attitude from both the book author and the interviewer about the masses of scrappers who eat twinkies and use jolee's stickers. it's certainly not the first article on this theme. in fact, it seems to be the only way scrappers are described.

so maybe the general scrapping public is not creating "art" or even "design". why is that bad? scrapping is just a means of personal expression by people with varying levels of talent. why be so harsh on a craft that is generally meant to be seen by a fairly small circle of people?

and why do i never see the names "ali edwards" or "cathy zielski" in these articles? they do incredible, personally meaningful work that also happens to be scrapbooking. granted, they have design experience and work for scrap magazines, but they still are able to document their families in beautiful and sometime hilarious ways. go ahead and google them. you'll be amazed at what some scrappers can do.