Think of a great Name?

Freds Fish N Chips any good?

How About....

Words & Approved Phrases
Commonplace Books
The Friendship Album
Weaving Of A Person
Memories & Roots
Trust Me... Its Personal
Purple Card Again
Greeting Card Corner

Scrapbooking started many centuries ago and has long been used as a way to record personal histories or as a form of artistic expression. Early scrap bookers collected bright colored scraps of paper, such as advertisements, labels, newspaper articles and greeting cards. These scraps would be arranged by subject or material type and placed in books. The use of these pieces of â€œscrapâ€ paper, and their placement, gave rise to the term scrapbooks.

Some of the earliest scrapbooks were in the form of common place books, friendship albums, and Granger books. Common place books began in the 17th century. The earliest known reference to scrapbooking was in 1598, when an author described gathering â€œwords and approved phrases... to make use as it were a common place book.â€ People wrote poems, quotes, pasted newspaper articles, or shared hobbies like knitting in their books. Some of these books were purchased but many were handmade, using wall covering for the cover. Granger books were printed with blank pages in the back for personalizing. William Granger invented these books and also published a manual on how to embellish them.

By 1706, educated men and women were creating common place books after author John Locke, a philosopher, published his â€œNew Method of Making Common-place Books.â€ Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, kept leather-bound volumes of Granger and common place books in his library. He filled his books with news clippings, drawings, diary entries, dried leaves, and other personal memorabilia.

Another interesting type of scrapbooking was the friendship album. These little books included quotes, poems, thoughts, even hair weaving of a person. Girls would collect hair from all their friends and weave them into intricate designs including ribbon and pressed flowers, with a remembrance about that person. It was a unique way to preserve a persons memory before photography became common place.

Besides being a famous author, Mark Twain was an avid scrap booker and he dedicated Sundays to enjoying his hobby. In 1872, Twain patented and marketed his very own Patent Scrap Book through Brentanoâ€™s Literary Emporium in New York City. The Patent Scrap Book was a major break-through in scrapbooking because it had water-activated adhesive on the page for adhering your scraps. In addition to the Patent Scrap Book, Twain sold different scrapbook designs through the Montgomery Ward catalog.

A peak decade for scrapbooking was 1880-1890. Cameras and photographs became widely available and people starting using pictures in their scrapbooks. Magazines of the time often included articles on what to include in your scrapbooks. They often encouraged people to include their inner most thoughts and desires. This is probably why the journal or personal diary also rose to such popularity.

The popularity of Scrapbooks began to decline around 1940, when photo albums became common place. It wasnâ€™t until 1975, when the miniseries â€œRootsâ€ played on television, that scrapbooks became popular again. Suddenly people wanted to get to know their pasts and leave something of themselves for the future. Pop culture artist Andy Warhol worked endlessly on documenting and describing every aspect of his life. The result was a collection of 42 scrapbooks.

In 1980, the Christensen family in Utah decided to share their collection of 50 family scrapbooks, with the guests at the World Conference on Records. The reaction was immediate and overwhelming! The family decided to publish the first modern book about scrapbooking, â€œKeeping Memories Alive,â€ and opened a retail store with the same name. Thus began the modern phase of scrapbooking using acid-free products.

Today, scrapbooking is the expressive art of creatively showcasing photographs and memorabilia. Acid-free paper and products are used to create individual works of art. The pages are enhanced with stickers, stamping, die-cuts, artwork and Journaling. Each day a new product or technique is introduced to the scrapbooking market.

Scrapbooking has grown into a world-wide phenomenon and has been written about in Time Magazine, the Wall Street journal and the Washington Post, among others. The industry has grown from a $350 million dollar per year industry in 1998 to more than $1.4 billion dollar per year industry in 2002 and it continues to expand exponentially.

Scrapbooking has been around for centuries and while the popularity may come and go it is for all generations and will be around for generations to come.