~By Anu. I have roughly three dozen shoeboxes full of old photos. And with a new baby, the number of glossy prints glutting my tiny London closets is growing faster than you can say 'kodak moment'. If you're like me, you've probably also got a stack of DVDs with precious .jpgs you never even look at!
What to do?
Recently, I wandered into a bizarre and uniquely American ritual. A group of professional women had gathered to eat and chat. After the scrumptious vegan tart and salad had been tucked away... the women unpacked enormous rolling black file-o-faxes. But instead of reports or stacks of invoices, out came a dizzying array of stickers, decorative paper, lettering, fake stick-on jewels... and stacks of personal photographs arranged by event.
Welcome to the obsessive and oddly satisfying world of scrapbooking.
Only in America will you find a multi-million dollar industry competing to help women (and maybe a few men) organize and display their family photos. One of the pioneering scrapbooking companies is named... wait for it... "Creative Memories." Its motto: "Your Life. Your Story. Your Way."
Across America, in department and craft stores, whole new sections have popped up selling scrapbooking albums, wallpaper, and thousands of paper trinkets shaped like sunglasses and beachballs to adorn those holiday photos. There are special cutting tools, each branded and bundled like computer software.
My friend Jennifer initiates me:
A party is called a 'Crop'. "Crop til you drop!" Like sewing circles, Jennifer explains, women get together, eat, socialize and compile photos of their family vacations, children’s school activities, Christmases, holidays and birthdays.
The 'crop' we attend has the seriousness of a newspaper editorial office in the hours before publication. And the tools are just as intricate.
Each Scrapbooker is armed with a Personal Trimmer (!) No, luckily it has nothing to do with nose hair. A Personal Trimmer is a mini cutting machine to slice photos. A mat and blade set is also de rigeur. Mary, one of the veteran scrapbookers, uses a 'tape runner' to atttach the photos to the page, while Nathalie, our host, searches through her 'Power Palettes' for a suitable color background to the page she's currently assembling.
My favorite is the corner rounder... no points for guessing what it does. For the die hard scrapbooker, there is also the Cricut, a die punch system which custom cuts letters using your computer's fonts (retails for $300).
“Gosh, what do you think the mom’s with just scissors are
doing?” Jennifer says, inimitably deadpan.
The company was founded in 1987 when Montana housewife Rhonda Anderson showed a group of mothers her technique of preserving family photos in albums. Soon after, according to the Creative Memories website, Rhonda contacted a Minnesota album manufacturer to place an order for 40 albums. The woman who answered the after-hours call was Cheryl Lightle and the two conceived the idea of selling photo safe scrapbook albums using the direct sales party plan model. If you really need to know more, you can read all about it in their joint autobiography.
The average scrapbook costs about $200 by the time you've purchased the special album cover, the acid and lignin-free pages, page protectors, and the bling that makes it so .... fun (or tacky, depending on your point of view!) *
Jennifer is the proud owner of 30 (very tasteful)
volumes, including an exquisitely elegant one detailing her family genealogy. A former 'Consultant' (as Creative Memories sales people are
called), Jennifer spent years making a living from hosting parties
and selling products.
"I'd call my clients' husbands and say, 'This is what she wants for Christmas. I'll even wrap it all and deliver. All you have to do is pay for it,' and they did!"
Nathalie, our extremely gracious and creative host, tells me if she has an hour for lunch at work, she pulls out her photos and tools and starts cutting away. I try to imagine what my London neighbors would say if I tried to sell them a corner rounder...** Personally, I can't see it flying in the UK, but across America, scrapbooking is the new Avon or Tupperware. If you want to hear what ordinary moms are thinking about, get yourself to a crop... I'm sure Michelle Obama will be hosting one around re-election time.
As the party winds down, and the scraps collect, Mary, who's been diligently compiling pages showcasing the latest family vacation says, "My husband asked, ‘What would you grab if there was a fire?’ And I said, my scrapbooks... Well, my pocketbook too.." A moment later, she adds: "Oh! And the kids." (laughter)... "But even if we didn’t, at least we’d have their photos!” (hoots of laughter)
Post-script: I did end up buying a 'corner-rounder' and personal trimmer for a friend in London who I know diligently compiles albums every year... Later, mulling it over, I convinced myself that it wouldn't be naff at all to make a nice acid-free album of my son's first year... Thanks to a shrill, but extremely efficient consultant in my parent's hometown, I managed to get hold of a mat and blade set, my own trimmer, some circle patterns and a lovely pale blue album with pages and protectors. I couldn't help but think all the while that this is a hobby for people with lots of free time and luxury...(and honestly, I can't pretend I don't have both) But I can't imagine my friends in Iraq wanting to lovingly adorn photos of their misery with cute paper accessories (or maybe they would... even people in war-torn Iraq celebrate weddings..) Sometimes it pays not to be too philosophical...I'll let you know how My Life | My Story | My Way turns out...!
*Whatever you think of scrapbooking or America, you cannot deny that most American products (except chocolate & cars) are so extremely well made, you can't help but be impressed. The same is true of these albums and all the accessories. They are ingenious to the point of excess.
**In England, it's considered too personal to ask someone their name on the first meeting, much less invite them to a party to share their entire personal life, not to mention sell them stuff.
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