scrapbooking, SB stuff, and the end of an era

in no particular order, lol.  (click on the photos to make them bigger)

The end of an era:  the 'local' scrapbook store that I shopped and cropped at (a 'crop' is a get-together with hours of crafting, socializing, and snacks) closed right after Labor Day weekend.  

The owners both have kids in high school now, and it seemed like a good time for them to focus on other things and take a break from the long hours retail sales involved.  They did have one last 'blowout' 3-day crop over Labor Day weekend that I attended.  Because they had sold some of their store fixtures, they made room for more crafters than they usually had in attendance-  there were 32 of us crafting all weekend long!  It was bustling with activity, as people shopped the store-closing sale and the owners dismantled the store and fixtures around us as we crafted.  I attended on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday (I needed one day to recover and relax before going back to work on Tuesday).  

My space is the middle/bottom of the photo below-- my workspace is actually pretty clean in that picture, although you might not believe it, lol.  Most of my supplies (my collapsible wagon full of boxes!) are not in the picture, along the wall behind my work space.

The photo below is the store the following Wednesday, when they were selling their last inventory before closing their doors later that night.  They had sold a good many of the store fixtures, including their worktables, bookcases, tools, slat wall displays, etc. to various individuals and other organizations / stores in the area.  It was really odd to see the space so empty.  I made one last purchase that included some plastic storage drawers, ribbon, and a few of my favorite paper punches from their classroom.  

"Modern-era" scrapbooking has been around for at least 20-25 years, now-  I remember when I first got into it in the early 1990s, when there were multiple magazines being published, and you could find a scrapbooking store practically on every corner, it seemed.  It was the era of the 'sticker wall' with rolls of stickers to purchase that could be used to decorate your pages, tracing letters using templates to make a page title, and hand-made page embellishments that included 'paper dolls' that you could make from patterned paper to match the people in your photos, lol.  (like everything else, scrapbooking has trends that come and go- some are better left gone, haha!)

Scrapbooking has changed over the years, and the popularity of online shopping, blogs, and other websites has changed the brick-and-mortar store part of the hobby.  Not sure if that's a good thing; I like seeing and touching my supplies to buy them, and I do miss the days of getting a scrapbooking magazine every month in the mail.  But websites like Pinterest and YouTube have now become my 21st-century 'scrapbook magazine' fix for ideas and inspiration, I guess. 

Yesterday, I attended the Shopping event at the 20th anniversary of the Scrapbook Expo, a traveling convention that schedules classes, shopping, and a crop as part of a 2-day event.  The picture above is my 'haul' of goodies-  some stickers from a company I really liked that's no longer in business (I love small letter stickers!), a whole SEVEN pieces of paper (which is an unusually small number for me, considering I loooove, loooove, loooove all kinds of patterned paper), and some special page protectors that will allow me to add even more photos to my scrapbook pages.  

The photo above is my current work space-  for the time being, I have commandeered our dining room table!  At the end of the month, I'm going to be attending a 2 1/2 day scrapbook retreat at a hotel, so I'm trying to get organized so I can be productive during the weekend-- some pre-planning of my projects, editing and ordering photos to be printed, things like that.  (basically, I am a messy crafter-  it's just how I work best.)

The photos below are a few layouts that I have in-process right now;  I make scrapbook layouts of our daily life along with layouts that include photos of places we've gone, or things we've done.  Scrapbooking / memory keeping is definitely a good way to 're-live' those experiences later; plus, it's fun to play with all of the pretty papers, ribbons, trims, and embellishments and to use them to enhance the photographs.   

The two layouts above are from a 'gourd show' we attended at the local county fairgrounds back in February.  There were decorative gourd artists from all over the country, and a special exhibit from China, if I remember correctly, exhibiting and selling their artwork, along with  supplies, idea books, and all sorts of tools.  The level of artistry was spectacularly stunning, and my photos do NOT do their work justice.  The pages still need a title and embellishments that 'go with' the Southwestern feel of the pages, and journaling to remember the details later.   (like the detail about the people and their gourd art from China-  I certainly won't remember that later, for sure.)

The two 12x12 pages above are also not quite done yet; the brown space on the right-hand page is waiting for a photo I forgot to have printed, and the pages still need a title, embellishments, and journaling.  The photos are ones I took in a 'wildflower prairie patch' area at the edge of town where my parents live; I took the photos when I visited them in June.  I do love taking photos of places, flowers, and wildlife-  landscape and flower photos are 'easier' than wildlife, or people, lol.  

So even though the hobby of scrapbooking has changed and evolved over the past 25 years, for us 'paper lovers' it will always include pretty paper, photos, and all the cool, fancy, creative, and neat things you can do with them.