Seeing where theyвЂ™d gone and what theyвЂ™d bought in the time before I existed. In my memory, I sat for hours on the floor of her closet, reading every item on that checkbook register. I liked looking through her jewelry box, and sifting through her drawers and under her bed, mostly in search of hidden Christmas presents (she shopped all year!), but what I loved most was drawers or boxes with documents of any sort in them, because then I might find stuff from before I was born. When I was a kid, one of my favorite things was snooping around in my momвЂ™s bedroom. One of my earliest and clearest memories is of looking through an old check register, dated during the months just before and just after I was born. It almost feels like a responsibility, to be the family story keeper.Д«ut I think my reason for scrapbooking goes deeper than the supplies, the creativity, or even the writing. The preserving of memories for people down the road. Plus, there is a sort of virtuous appeal to it. (Or I would have invented journaling!) I donвЂ™t have artistic skill, but I do have skill with words, so scrapbooking gives me a place to share what IвЂ™ve written. I wouldnвЂ™t be a scrapbooker if scrapbooking didnвЂ™t include journaling. Of course, the biggest appeal is the fact that on a scrapbook layout, you get to combine photos (IвЂ™ve liked taking pictures since I was on the 9 th grade yearbook staff) with words. I love art, but I canвЂ™t make it, yet scrapbooking feels sort-of like making art. I grew up in a little town with a big art museum. My uncles and my dad dabbled in painting, too, and even though I was pretty awful, one of my favorite classes in high school was art. I never knew my grandpa, who died when my dad was a teenager, but I admired him because he had been a painter. I canвЂ™t draw or paint or sculpt figures even my stick figures are pathetic, even my handwriting is horrible. I am not an artist, but I come from a line of artistic people. All of that stuff! It was all so pretty and cute and colorful. So I went to the scrapbook store, Pebbles in my Pocket, for a crop with my friend Chris.ДЄnd then I fell in love. I didnвЂ™t want to use Creative Memories, which seemed like it had too many rules. All that stuff! Then I had Haley, and I started taking way more pictures (with the horrible, awful, terrible camera we had then), and since I have always been a person who processes by writing, I was writing all of her stories down, and somehow I made myself be brave.

It seemed like so much stuff to buy! My sister-in-law started scrapbooking, and all of my bunco friends, and Chris, but I resisted because, gah. She invited me to a party once, when I was pregnant with Haley I looked at the catalog and both immediately felt in love with the idea and felt entirely overwhelmed. I first discovered scrapbooking through my friend Teresa, who worked at WordPerfect with me and also did Creative Memories albums. That photo on the left isn't really so contrasty in real life. What value does it hold for me? Why have I continued scrapbooking after (literally) all of the friends I started doing it with have stopped? Will the effort I have put into it be something that is valued later, or will it just be junk someone has to deal with after IвЂ™m gone? What meaning does it have in my life? How much of my approach has been influenced by the scrapbooking industry and how much has just been me? Will my kids really care if all of their moments and stories are documented? Why am I sort of embarrassed to tell anyone that I am a scrapbooker? Throughout this process, IвЂ™ve been thinking about scrapbooking in broad, sweeping terms. Still, staying true to my style means IвЂ™ve gotten rid of anything superfluously cute or decorative. I still think she was brilliant in her assessment because that is exactly my style (except for my tendency to love paisley and swirls, intricate script fonts and abstract but textural swashes of watercolor), but it isnвЂ™t always what is on trend in the scrapbooking world. One of my old scrapbooking friends, a long time ago, told me that she thought I had an Edwardian style, which is the opposite of Victorian: clean lines, simple patterns, and not a lot of embellishment. Plus, I want to be truer to my own aesthetic. I also need to reorganize my bookshelves.

Iscrapbook shutting down