Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking has been a fad for some time already. But looking at the great array of scrapbooking paraphernalia available in the shops, I wonder if anyone else notices the irony.

I mean the very term "scrap" in "scrapbooking" refers to odds and ends, discards, stuff which you find everywhere and which you can use in this craft. Basically a recycling of sorts, changing the original use and making it into something else, useful, pretty, interesting. Breathing new life into it. But with today's instant "I want it now" culture with people not wanting to spend much time waiting or making things, the shops are stocking up ready-made, instant, little trinkets and accessories for the hobbyist to pretty-up a scrapbook without having to do much else except lay them out in a pleasing manner.

With my first project for a friend's baby shower, I decided to stay true to scrapbooking or at least what I think it should be, and make most of the accessories myself, or incorporate real "scraps". So I used cords from paperbags to bind the pages together, amassed ribbon roses which I made, captions from magazines, old ribbons, buttons, concertina baby cut-out, Chinese New Year "ang pow", bits of felt and incorporated them all in my scrapbook. I don't want this to be an assembly job, a "just add water" project. I want this to be a project with real effort and real heart. And a bit of creativity doesn't hurt either.