Crafting Memories

On a recent evening at the Memories & More store in Tustin Marketplace, about a dozen women hunker over piles of snapshots, colored markers, patterned paper, rulers, stickers and paper punches, fastidiously chronicling their families’ lives in the pages of a photo album.

Nothing terribly remarkable about that, except that these women are not sticking pictures randomly under sheets of soon-to-yellow plastic. It’s a phenomenon called “scrapbooking”--making “memory books” of vibrant collages that enhance photographs, done with state-of-the-art, noncorrosive materials, and designed to be looked at often and last a lifetime.

Photos of a day at the beach might be embellished with rubber-stamped clouds, paper cut tolook like sand and a beach ball, stickers of umbrellas and lemonade, and handwritten journal notes in colorful, fancy lettering detailing little Bobby’s sand castle extravaganza.

The scrapbooking trend has spawned stores, products, magazines, books and classes. New products seem to debut every month, causing consumers (mostly women) to drop copious amounts of cash on gadgets with curious names like paper crimpers and circle cutters.

Industry veterans watch amazed as the trend continues to grow at a sprinter’s pace.

“I cannot think of anything that in the speed of its acceptance rivals this,” says Susan Brandt, director of communications for the New Jersey-based Hobby Industry Assn.

Indeed, at the recent HIA convention in Dallas, scrapbooking was the hot new craft on the block. Brandt estimates that about one-fourth of the 1,150 exhibitors were dedicated to scrapbooking or carried related supplies. At several workshops held throughout the four-day event, retailers learned everything from building a scrapbook page to merchandising new products.

A stroll among the booths at the Dallas Convention Center reveals that companies that already produce rubber stamps, specialty papers and pens are scrambling to get a piece of a burgeoning market that shows no immediate signs of slowing.

“We’ve been designing pens for years and years,” says Dale Nicholson, marketing manager of EK Success, which manufactures Zig pens, popular with scrapbookers. “This area seemed like a natural growth for us.”

She walks over to a wall display featuring marker pens with chiseled nibs, brush tips, thick points and thin, in colors from teal to baby pink.

“The people who were buying our products were saying, ‘Now we need this kind of pen,’ so we’re giving them what they want,” she says.

Families have long documented their histories with journals, letters and, later, photo albums. But a Utah grandmother and a Minnesota company have been credited with turning scrapbooking into a million-dollar industry.

Creative Memories, a St. Cloud, Minn.-based company, sells products through in-home classes and workshops. The company began in 1987 with six consultants; now there are 36,000 in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and, most recently, Australia.

As interest in memory albums has grown in the last two years, stores catering just to scrapbookers have opened around the country, with a concentration in the West and Midwest. They carry every general craft, rubber stamp and stationery. Even drug stores now carry supplies and kits.

On the must-have list of every scrapbooker are scissors that cut more than two dozen kinds of decorative edges; pens for writing, drawing and outlining; papers in hundreds of colors and styles; thousands of stickers; border templates; and paper punches that instantly create designs such as hearts, teddy bears, dinosaurs and cherubs.

Then there are accessories like the Cropper Hopper, a filing/storage system, and, for the scrapbooker who has everything, a $200 laminating machine that also makes stickers.

For those who want a little technology integrated into this hands-on craft, software is available for creating designs and lettering; companies like D.J. Inkers offer packages based on their rubber stamps.

Not happy with the standard photo album format? Ana Araujo, a creative arts designer with the rubber stamp company Limited Editions in Redwood City, Calif., came up with a stamp that’s used to create a 2 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch Mini Scrapbook System for those who prefer a smaller scale.

This craft has gone from 0 to 60 in a scant couple of years. Fans say it’s creative without requiring extensive artistic skills, it offers immediate gratification, it can be done sporadically to fit in with busy schedules, and it’s a pro-family activity that gets everyone involved.

“It really adds a lot to your family,” says Lisa Bearnson, editor of Creating Keepsakes magazine, a bimonthly that covers everything from how to take better pictures to “journaling,” writing background notes about the photos.

“It reminds you of what’s really important in life,” Bearnson says. “It helps children understand who they are, where they came from. My children beg to look at their albums every day. It’s almost like they’re the stars of their own magazine. They spark memories and really provide a lot of self-esteem.”

Bearnson believes album pages shouldn’t just be devoted to major events such as vacations or holidays. Seemingly mundane activities like taking baths and baking cookies can become special.

“I was dying to go on an autumn drive and feed the ducks with my kids, and I already had a scrapbook page in mind,” she says. “I wrote [some notes] and included my children’s recollections as well.”

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There’s a communal aspect to scrapbooking, which also makes it appealing. Women get together at “cropping” parties (cutting pictures to a specific size) and form friendships in their weekly classes, like the ones at Memories & More.

“I have two young kids, and it’s nice to get out of the house,” says Shelly Moore. “You get to be with other moms and just, the bonding and talking. It’s good therapy. And it’s cheaper. Well, it can be cheaper,” she adds, laughing.

“It’s time to spend with my daughter,” says Sharon Lingo, sitting next to daughter Jennifer Claar. “You make friends here, because Tuesday night we’re all regulars.”

Lingo was at work on a book filled with old family photos, some original, some duplicates. She points out one of her as a toddler wearing a bonnet.

“When I look at these, I think about the time spent with my mom,” she says.

“I compare these get-togethers to quilting bees,” says Michele Gerbrandt, editor of the quarterly Memory Makers magazine. “It’s a bonding that happens among women, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it because you’re being productive and getting personal gratification.”

Gerbrandt also trumpets the “healing” powers of photo albums. In a recent issue a young mother writes of how creating a scrapbook helped her cope with life after her husband left: “As the album progressed, many wounds began to heal. The pictures include my children . . . and the many friends and family members who prayed for us.”

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Some credit a Utah grandmother with being Scrapbooker Zero.

Some 22 years ago, Marielen Christensen was given an assignment from her Mormon church to motivate church members to research their genealogy. Looking through old family albums, she found photographs ruined by harmful elements in the glues, plastics and papers. Her search led to companies that made acid-free papers and archival page protectors that would preserve cherished photos.

“I presented that to the people around here,” Christensen explains. “It was a slow beginning, but we were invited to a world conference on record-keeping in Salt Lake City in 1980, and the response was overwhelming. And everyone wanted more information.”

Eventually Christensen started her own mail-order business in Spanish Fork, Utah, called Keeping Memories Alive, selling everything from an exclusive line of papers and binders to pens, punches and die-cut paper.

“The goal for us is still trying to help people bring their families together,” says Christensen. “But I think it has a long way to go yet. I think people in the world are clamoring to have a sense of identity and purpose. Genealogy is growing as a national hobby, and just with a date and a name and a scant history, a person feels like they’re part of something, part of a family.”

Her insistence on archival quality is now shared by thousands of savvy scrapbookers who won’t touch a product unless it’s labeled “acid-free” or “archival” (see accompanying box).

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The market will probably become saturate, as trends like this tend to top out. But industry watchers predict scrapbooking still hasn’t reached its potential. The East Coast hasn’t yet caught up with the West, and there is still Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan to conquer.

Bernie Kraft believes so strongly in scrapbooking that he refocused his family-owned rubber stamp and sticker store in the Santa Monica Place mall into a scrapbooking resource. Formerly called B.A. Stamper, the revamped Sticker Planet sells thousands of stickers, plus specialty papers, die cuts, templates and rubber stamps.

“About a year and a half ago, my wife and son and I were in Salt Lake City, and we discovered this craze. There is a proliferation of stores in scrapbooking. We were very impressed and decided to put in a scrapbook department,” Kraft says.

Daughter Hilary Kraft chalks up the popularity to “seeing a backlash against technology and a move toward more homemade things again. This is a craft that has a whole bunch of appeal.”

Scrapbooking is popping up in the most unlikely places. Dee Gruenig, who owns Posh Impressions rubber stamp and memory book stores in Brea and Irvine, has taught male soldiers the joy of scrapbooking.

After some initial reticence, she says, “it was incredible. They had so much fun. We had them do an album page on camouflage paper and used designs like a helmet and netting and a tent. They loved it.”