Pages Full of Memories

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Pages Full of Memories at the Yakima Herald-Republic

March 9, 2003
1,062 words

Pages Full of Memories -- All-night event draws folks who enjoy creating

By DORI HARRELL
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

They're addicted, and they admit it.

They also meet regularly - not to overcome their craving, but to feed it.

"I have such an addiction to paper," said Jan Scheuffele. "I have to look at it and touch it again and again. Everywhere I go, I buy paper."

Scheuffele isn't alone.

She and countless others in Yakima and nationwide stock up on paper needed for scrapbooking, a way of preserving memories and telling stories through photos and paper crafts.

The trend gained momentum in the late 1990s and has turned into an industry generating more than $1.5 billion in annual sales of products used in modern scrapbooks, according to the Hobby Industry Association.

Scrapbookers crop their pictures into squares, circles, ovals, triangles and hexagons. Then they mat them, and paste them on pages decorated with paper art, stickers, wire, rivets, fringe yarn, beads and mosaic tiles.

Some write sentences or paragraphs on their pages to help explain an event.

This is called journaling.

But it all starts with paper - sheer turquoise vellum perfect for pool party photos, cream card stock embossed with roses for wedding pictures or an orange butterfly print for birthday memories.

Three stores catering to scrapbookers opened last year in the Yakima Valley to help foster this paper addiction - Captured Moments in Selah, and Memories of the Heart and Make it Special, Make it Washington, both in Yakima.

All three stores host classes and "crop nights," where beginners-to-advanced scrapbookers gather for a long evening of piecing together pages and sharing ideas and supplies.

Before these shops opened, avid scrapbookers drove to stores in the Tri-Cities or Issaquah to attend such events.

But now, they can crop more and drive less.

"What I love is that we get together with all these people and get new ideas. And the camaraderie is great," said Scheuffele, speaking at a Crop Your Heart Out event on a recent Friday night at Make it Special.

That night, about 40 women turned out for a 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. scrapbooking marathon. Make it Special staff set up nearly 20 tables covering the ground floor of Glenwood Square, where the store is located.

Scrapbookers set out their Sizzix die cutters, Coluzzle matting templates, hammers, punches, adhesives, stickers, scissors and paper cutters. They browse the store for items they don't yet own, such as glue dots or microbeads.

If they want to buy something, the women merely mark the item down on a price sheet. They don't pay until the event ends.

Scheuffele, 53, teaches first grade at McKinley Elementary. She spread out two 12-inch-by-12-inch blue pages printed with tiny white stars. She then placed several photos of teachers and parents from last year on the pages, posing them at various angles.

She's scrapbooking her students and colleagues from 1990 to the present. She's naming the album "School Daze."

And the long night helped to kick-start her project.

"I cut my vacation a day short to be here for this," she said. "I flew in
from Sacramento this morning."

Her friend from Gleed, Lynette Young, said she is addicted, too.

"It brings back memories and helps you relive your situations," Young said.

She's working on an album of her son David, now 40 years old and living in Moxee, that will cover special moments from his birth to today.

That night, she scrapbooked his high school graduation photos.

"I'm writing a story of his life in pictures," Young said. "I sometimes spend days on a page. It's a gift - he doesn't know."

Many who've scrapbooked for three or four years, like Scheuffele and Young, lure their friends to the scrapbooking craze.

That's what happened with Beth Finch. She admired a friend's album and thought she'd try it herself.

She signed up for the Glenwood Square event and that night cropped pictures for the first time.

"I saw people packing in crates of supplies and thought, "Wow, these women are serious,'" Finch said. "I came with pictures, two pages and some scissors."

For her first pages, she decided to chronicle the life of her 21-year-old daughter, Pauline, who's in the Coast Guard and stationed at Tawas, Mich.

She trimmed a photo of a 3-year-old Pauline, wearing an uncle's West Point cadet cap, with scissors that cut a wavy line.

"I'm a little nervous cutting my pictures," she said. "But I think I'm going to pursue this."

Throughout the evening, Make it Special owner Kay Thomas offered classes and prizes - for those who brought the most supplies and for those who scrapbooked the most pages.

Similar events take place nationwide nearly every weekend.

There are about 3,000 independent scrapbook stores across the country, said Bill Gardner, editorial director of Craftrends Magazine, a craft industry trade publication.

"The industry has really exploded," he said. "It wouldn't surprise us if it's growing 50 percent a year."

Marketing efforts by consumer niche magazines, such as Creating Keepsakes, owned by Craftrends, and Making Memories, owned by F&W Publications, help spur more and more consumers to start the craft, Gardner said.

Also, companies keep churning out new products and how-to books. The trend now is for manufacturers to license designs by artists.

"This gives unique looks to papers, stamps and embellishments that no one else has," Gardner said. "This helps create an identity with consumers."

The industry continues to expand and hasn't yet peaked, he said.

Michele Gerbrandt, founder of Memory Makers Magazine and Books, agrees.

The magazine's circulation grew by 97 percent last year to more than 300,000, she said. "It's a lifestyle activity, like golf for men," Gerbrandt said. "If an important event is coming, you're recording it for a scrapbook rather than just attending it."

That's the way Melissa Peart of Yakima views it.

She's been scrapbooking for three years and is working on several projects, including albums of her daughter, Julissa, 3; her son, Austin, 8 months; and her family history.

"It's fun, and it gives me a chance to be creative," Peart said. "These are albums I can pass down to my kids."

For the last six months, she and five or six friends have been gathering once a month for a scrapbooking party.

"I didn't think it would be so addicting," she said. "I thought it would be something I would work on here or there, no big deal. But I was sucked in."

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