crapbooking, a time-consuming hobby gaining in popularity, counts among its devotees everyone from sorority girls to suburban mothers. Depending on the materials, it can be either expensive or cheap.
Molly Harty, assistant manager of Hobby Lobby, said many students use stickers for scrapbooking. The stickers range from 99 cents to $2.99. Hobby Lobby also sells 8 1/2 x 11 sheets for 25 cents.
Harty said they also sell refill sheets for the albums.
Beside storing stickers, Harty said most people use scrapbooks for storing photos.
"I've seen a lot of students use them for poetry and journaling," Harty said. "I don't know if they're high school students or college students, but a lot of students use them for that."
Harty said that Hobby Lobby has four aisles of scrapbooking materials from rubber stamps to stickers.
Noting the trends in decorating scrapbook's covers, Harty mentioned that some people buy plain albums, then cover them in fabric.
"There are little dye cutters you can use to cut out paper doll-like things," she said. "Those are especially popular for kids and also a lot of sorority girls do that and then decorate them with their colors."
Scrapbooks range in price from $9.99 to $24.99 at both Hobby Lobby and Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts in Muncie.
Alyssa Miller, a sophomore musical theater major and member of Alpha Omicron Pi Sorority, said her sorority often puts together scrapbooks of pictures of past events and activities before rush to have something to show the recruits. Miller said they also have a sort of 'yearbook' that shows the different chapters from all over the country, and one that traces its chapter's history from when it started 50 years ago.
Miller also made her own scrapbook this summer to commemorate a trip to New York.
"We took pictures daily of every place we visited. We covered the whole island of Manhattan," Miller said. "I did a spread for each place I visited - New York University, the Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero, Broadway shows, etc. I cut the pictures and put them in with dates for each picture of the day I visited. I went to a craft store and got NY stickers. One of the Broadway shows I attended had a '20s theme, so I got stickers from the '20s to decorate that page with."
Becky Keever, a Spanish teacher at Muncie Central High School, is also a scrapbook consultant and independent contractor for the scrapbooking company, Creative Memories.
"Someone who is interested in scrapbooking can approach it in two different ways," Keever said. "They could either do a home or dorm class and bring eight to10 photos, and I'll take them through the process of how to make a page, or we could do a free demonstration where I show them how to do photos."
Keever is an independent contractor for Creative Memories, which she describes as a 15-year-old company and leader in the scrapbooking industry.
"The company was started by two women committed to preserving the past and preserving photos and preserving the stories behind them," Keever said. "(They were) celebrating the present and creating hope for the future."
The Creative Memories Web site is www.creativememories.com and it is global in 7 different countries. All of their albums come with a lifetime guarantee and 15 pages.
Keever suggests that scrapbooks can be used to hold memorabilia such as money from foreign countries visited and sleeves to hold the money can be purchased. There are also books to hold event programs and ticket stubs. Keever suggests taking classes in the home and following up on those classes with workshops to help complete the album.
The Creative Memories Web site will also help find a scrapbooking consultant nearest your home.
"Say you are a BSU student, but live in New Jersey. Then you can go to the site, type in your address, and find the consultant nearest to you," Keever said. "The Web site also has a link to page layouts that can show you different things that you can do with pages."
Keever said that two of the biggest misconceptions about scrapbooking are that you have to be artistic to do it and that it is expensive.
"The costs of albums depends on the size," she said. "You can buy really small ones for $3.99 that fit 3 1/2 x 5 pictures. They're all expandable albums for the most part. They come with 10 pages and you can add more, up to 100 pages, which is probably the biggest you would want to go."
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