Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking refers to the ‘scraps’ of our lives – photos, cards, wedding invitations, travel guides, ticket stubs, a pressed flower – that we want to keep to remind us of the past. Unlike photo albums, scrapbooks are an overall remembrance of things past, stored between the covers, arranged in an expression of your artistic nature.

The idea of scrapbooking is not new, but the market on ways to embellish your scrapbook has taken off in the last decade. There are whole sections in department stores dedicated to scrapbooking paraphernalia, and indeed you can find smaller dedicated shops that are only about scrapbooking. The availability of scrapbook add-ons – buttons, grommets and stickers – has inspired people to create personal masterpieces. There are scissors that cut different shaped borders, paper cutters that cut perfectly straight lines, cutting systems that allow a person to trim a photo into a perfect circle, star or square, and punches that can trim your photo or paper to different shapes.

The list of must-have supplies for scrapbooking includes a sturdy scrapbook, plain acid-free paper, a sharp pair of straight (as opposed to scalloped) scissors, markers and some sort of adhesive. Make sure that your products are acid-free because those products that are not can aid is the eventual deterioration of your photos. “Should-haves” are a variety of solid, coloured papers, a lettering stencil, and a cutting system that will enable you to cut a variety of shapes fairly easily.

The beauty of a scrapbook is that unlike a photo, you can actually connect with, even touch, real things that were with you, your friends and family in the past. It might be a gelato-stained receipt from that crazily expensive cafe in Florence, or that cherry blossom from Maruyama Park in Kyoto. Scrapbooks are your artistic interpretation of the journeys you took through life.