The Why...

I scrapbook because I can show off my photos the way that I want them to be seen and the wonderful feelings that come from doing it.

When I first began taking photos, I used “magnetic” photo albums to display them. I loved that I could arrange as many photos in whatever way I chose, as well as supplementing them with paper-backed stickers and other ephemera. However, I quickly found out the “magnetic” meant that if I covered the entire surface with photos, the clear protector would no longer stick to the page and my memorabilia sometimes fell out.

I soon switched to appropriately sized pocket photo albums. These worked well for a while, until I “upgraded” to an APS format camera, which had the ability to switch between 4”x6”, 4”x7” and 4”x10” photo sizes. At the time, there were very few ready made albums; unless I took all of my photos in the smallest format, I did not have any way to display them.

After discussing this frustration with my best friend, she took me to a sticker store in her town. This was my first experience with 12”x12” patterned paper and the formal concept of “scrapbooking”. (I had done some informal scrapbooking with photos and ephemera, colored printer paper, a three ring notebook binder, rubber cement, and a pencil while I was in college.) I was intrigued by the fact that these papers were bigger than the panoramic photos that I was taking with my APS camera; I bought a few sale papers with some stickers that I thought would coordinate with some recent vacation photos.

It all snowballed from there. I quickly bought a 12” paper trimmer, a Xyron 500 adhesive machine, a Sizzix die cut machine and the complete uppercase Lollipop alphabet and I have never looked back. From the moment that I stuck all my flamingo photos on a page, with the 4”x10” shot of the entire flock centered across the middle and the rest of the photos cropped to focus on a particular bird or two, covered in flamingo stickers just because it was kitschy and fun, I became a scrapbooker for life. I get an amazing feeling from being able to crop and place my photos in the way that visually appeals to me.

I have moved on from that APS camera (to a DSLR) and from physical prints and adhesives (to a digital format), but I continue to scrapbook for the joyful feelings that I get from showing off my photos in the best way that I know.