HOBBIES Memories preserved through scrapbooking

The modern scrapbook is a practical pictorial journal and archive of life.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Scrapbooking is America's newest hot hobby. An enormous industry estimated at $2.5 billion has evolved around it, with spectacular growth in the last two years.
Retailers report that growth in 2002 was between 30 percent and 80 percent, according to Don Meyer of the Hobby Industry Association. Industry experts say the scrapbooking industry will continue to grow for at least two to five more years.
There are scrapbooking clubs, cruises, slumber parties and conventions. Gatherings known as crops (as in cropping pictures) last for days.
There are about 2,500 scrapbooking stores in the United States, said Meyer. Craft giant Michaels has opened two scrapbook-only stores called Recollections with more to come. Jo-Ann Stores Inc. devotes 92 linear feet to scrapbooking in its ETC stores plus 24 feet of stickers and 68 feet of rubber stamp and card supplies also used in the hobby.
The traditional Jo-Ann stores carry the basics in a 24-foot section, said Stacey Gough who oversees the category for the Hudson-based retailer.
Big difference
Scrapbooking is far different now than in the days when dewy-eyed high schoolers pressed prom corsages and ticket stubs on construction paper. The modern scrapbook is more of a pictorial journal and archive of life.
"You're scrapbooking emotions," said Gough of Jo-Ann.
Photos are enhanced with stickers and high-quality, acid-free papers designed to preserve photos and mementos. "We don't see it as a craft, we see it as a way of preserving memories," said Deidre Bullock, a consultant for the Minnesota-based Creative Memories, the largest nontraditional retailer of scrapbooking products. "It keeps the art of storytelling alive."
Bullock, who is the youth minister at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Akron, uses scrapbooking in her ministry with junior high and high school students. It helps remind them of the joys of life and the importance of their relationships, she said.
It's a widely believed throughout the craft industry that scrapbooking originated in Utah, where the activity grew out of genealogy. The interest in family history among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints began overlapping into mementos and albums. Slowly, in other parts of the country, crafters began learning how to archive their keepsakes.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 two years ago, Americans took to scrapbooking with a new dedication and passion, said Unity Marketing's Pam Danziger who studies the consumer paper, stationery and greeting card industries. She estimates that 20 percent of households now have scrapbooks compared to 13 percent two years ago.
Served as a catalyst
"The 9/11 attacks were a catalyst for a trend that had already started. It really brought home the fact we need to connect with each other," said Danziger. "The essence of this trend is scrapbooking. It's the biggest, hottest thing going."
Statistics show that most crafters are young mothers, sorority members and teen-age girls.
Scrapbooking will never leap completely from the female world of crafting into the mass market unless the major corporations embrace it, said Danziger. Hallmark Inc. of Kansas City and American Greetings Corp. of suburban Cleveland would need to make far more of a commitment to the hobby than they have. She calls it the "biggest missed opportunity" for them she can imagine.
"We're getting there," said Allison Landers, director of Create and Print for Americangreetings.com, the online division of the company. "The scrapbooking boom is growing too big to ignore."
Create and Print allows scrapbookers and others to design and print cards and do photo embellishment on their home computer. The annual fee is $19.95 for access to thousands of designs and layouts.
Consumers can insert their photos in the computer or print out the design and paste them on the paper.
Has advantages
Landers, who scrapbooks herself, believes the advantages of using a computer to scrapbook are ease and simplicity.
"Sometimes you walk down a store aisle and it's so overwhelming," she said.
Computers also allow consumers to throw out what they don't like and start over -- a costly prospect when the materials were purchased at a store, taken home and used. Also, she said, new designs are being added all the time.
Scrapbooking can be expensive. The average scrapbooker spends $54 on the hobby, but dedicated scrapbookers spend nearly $1,600 on it, according to the Hobby Industry Association.
Albums run from $20 to $40. Extra pages, protectors, pens and other embellishments are extra. There are carrying cases, specially treated boxes to preserve memories, scissors, rulers and templates.
But scrapbookers have shown they're willing to spend.
"Memories," said Bullock, "are priceless."