If ever you’ve pulled out that old scrapbook you created decades ago as a kid, you’ll know the pleasure it can provide as you nostalgically go through the pages. Yet this form of leisure isn’t just restricted to youngsters.
In fact today, keeping a scrapbook isn’t really an activity that’s top of most kids’ lists of things to do. Many of them prefer their virtual electronic world.
Yet in a sense, that’s their loss and adults are now picking up this pastime and turning it into a major leisure activity – though it too now has an electronic component!
Past Times
Anyone much over about 40 or 45 can probably remember that as a kid, scrapbooks used to consist of many precious things that were stored in a large paper book.
Sometimes they were pasted on to each page using glue or scotch tape. Sometimes, for the better-organized kids that were aware of posterity and possible future values, removable ‘hinges’ were used or the collectables stored in folders that were themselves attached to pages – that way the items weren’t ruined by glue or tape directly applied. It also made swapping and dealing ‘the scraps’ easier!
The range of collectables and scraps was almost unlimited. Boys tended to collect cards from candy bars such as baseball and football heroes or ships and planes. Perhaps you might also have collected programs from sports matches or the cinema, newspaper cuttings about people you liked or even things such as the labels soaked off beer bottles.
Girls also were heavily involved, although in days when gender roles in play were perhaps more prominent that today, they tended to concentrate on things such as postcards, pressed flowers, cuttings about movies or pop stars and so on.
The line between keeping a scrapbook and collecting was always a little blurred. Some scrapbooks from past decades can today be worth a small fortune if they happen to contain entire sets of a card type or rare programs or posters etc.
21st Century Scrapbooking
Today though, scrapbooking has re-emerged as a predominantly adult occupation and there are vast numbers of clubs and associations springing up all over the country and overseas.
The modern version is perhaps more heavily oriented towards memories and family mementoes than the ‘collecting of the past’ and things have gone decidedly up-market and high-tech.
Today, you can organize your digitized photos, music, text and scanned images, into electronic scrapbooks. These can be embellished with many forms of electronic enhancement and published onto the web for your friends and family to share.
It’s even possible to digitize an older cherished paper-based scrapbook from your youth and keep a version on disk for safety and security.
Tradition Isn’t Dead
Yet if you’re a traditionalist, don’t lose heart! There is also a growing resurgence in the paper-based scrapbook and many companies are now supplying packs that include a huge scrapbook and ancillary materials such as hinges, borders and stencils etc.
Once again, the modern emphasis is probably more to do with photos and similar memorabilia rather than items of collecting. It’s also now done with style and panache that would have been unthinkable for most of those youngsters of past generations!
So, whether you have piles of old photos sitting around, music that rings a bell in your heart from ‘days gone by’ or just some old college reports that you’d love to keep safe and in one place, why not have a look on the web at the range of scrapbooking ideas now available?
Similar Posts:
- None Found
Comments on this entry are closed.