You can usually count on a dog-eared Reader's Digest from 1974 (complete with a I Am Joe's Ingrown Toenail article) cozied up to an Architectural Digest which mightn't be quite big enough to cover the stack of National Enquirers. Then there are the books, any classic from Lawrence Sanders and John LeCarre to Sidney Sheldon and a well worn Harlequin or two.
I'm refusing here to acknowledge any sort of novelty bathroom reading. Damn.
On a recent visit to John's cottage, I came across something that at first frightened me. Fright turned to fascination and wonder and from there it was all fits and peals of laughter.
Here was a new sort of magazine previously unknown to me. Now, I've heard of scrapbookin' as an art (heh) but I'd not imagined that it was something that merited it's own magazine.
I'm still not sure it does.
Who knew there were so many ways to put a photo in an album and fancy it up? Not I.
Really, ideas on how to use scraps of coloured paper, stickers and other doodads to help adorn photos and keepsakes is about all I could make it out to be.
This must be the terrain? domain? insanity? of some very bored and possibly unhappy people. Careful that you don't spend so much time framing those little photos into manufactured memories that you forget to make real ones.
The simplest photo of you just standing there potentially could become so adorned at Mom's hand that it might just be forced to become fraught with meaning.
remember that time? you remember! we had just come from that thing and you said that funny thing about the other thing and then we went here and there and then something else happened and I bought this ribbon and you were standing there so I took the photo and arranged the ribbon under the corner of the photo in this album just so, remember that? that was a nice time wasn't it dear? remember? yeah, it was nice
It all reminds me of those people who go on vacation and camcorder every single thing never taking their viewer eye away from the machine for fear they'll miss something to bore everyone back home to death with. What about actually experiencing the moment? Don't let the photos / video become the memory.
Anyway...
The most gratifying section of the magazine was not the one that showed me what to do with those leftover paper doilies from my last tea party but rather the networking list of the many scrapbooking outlets throughout the U.S. of A., Canada and even extending into the U.K.
Try on the names of some of these scrapbooking stores for yourself.
I find it helps to announce the names aloud in your best pageant voice for the national televised audience.
Scrappity-Do-Dah!
Scrappin' USA Superstore
Scrapbook 'n' Such
Crop-Paper-Scissors
Scraptopia
Whim-So-Doodle
Scrap 2 It
Scrappin' Attack!
Scraptastic
and those were really just a very small sampling. Most have their own websites too so feel free to order lots of shiny things from them.
My cottage will only have serious magazines such as People and real literature like Harry Potter.
2 comments:
I sometimes wonder when the whole scrapbook thing started. I would guess the era maybe coming to the end now that you can stick every event in your life onto a flickr page and then e-mail the link to everyone whom you've ever met.
Maybe someday they'll have a magazine called "Bloggin'"
Wouldn't it be blogtastic if we were both to become contributors to Bloggin' Magazine Chancelucky?!
Good point, everyone does seem to do that and even with blogging, it's all about links and hits half of the time. Are we part of the problem or part of the solution?
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