“YOU scrapbook?!” many said when I told them about the subject of this column.
The last time I evoked such a shocked response was when I told my father that I, his last hope for a jock in the family, wanted to join the dance and cheerleading team during basketball season.
Shocking, I know. For someone who’s opted to play club soccer, IM football and basketball, and write for the campus newspaper instead of a more artistic publication like the Tower Light, I don’t seem like the type to scrapbook.
At an institution where we are encouraged to pursue beauty, we’re all searching for ways to express and share it. Some do this through dance, art, design, reciting poetry, or playing sports. Although I seldom have time for it, one of my favorite ways of making and sharing beauty is through scrapbooking.
I’m not talking about the online kind where you upload photos and insert them into set places amidst cute designs and pre-chosen fonts. I’m referring to the kind where I sit at table cluttered with glitter, buttons, ribbon, stacks of paper, and glue sticks for hours over a series of days to create an album featuring photos from special events like vacations or weddings.
The last time I did this was over Christmas break to make a book for my friend Nicole’s Christmas present. She traveled to New Mexico with me for part of her holiday break. There, we visited Native American merchants in Albuquerque, hiked mountains two miles high, sledded on sand dunes, and babysat my nephew for a day without permanently harming him or ourselves.
Most importantly, it was the first time we’d spent more than a few hours together since parting ways for college. Just as we were discovering the beauty of a new places, we were re-discovering the beauty of our own friendship.
I wanted a way to preserve our photos and snippets of comical conversation, and the best way possible was using the medium of scrapbooking.
I loved the opportunity to sort through our snapshots, choosing which ones to include and thinking about what they would mean to her when she looks back upon them in the future.
Then began the giant puzzle of how to organize and present them. I felt like I was exercising both my logical and my creative capacities by transferring the inspiration from my head to a concrete page whose limits constantly seemed to restrain my uncontainable ideas.
Many days later, I completed the project and I showed the finished pages to my sister. I laughed as I explained the quotes from an Eminem look alike with whom Nicole and I shared a shuttle and elaborated on stories about falling into a cactus and frantically plucking out the thorns before Nicole could see.
By making the effort to decorate these pictures, I demonstrated their importance to myself and everyone looking at them. They then induced questions that prompted me to remember and share stories that I would have otherwise forgotten.
Just like dressing up for important events and choosing just the right outfit for a date, “making up” a scrapbook page symbolizes an important event worth investing effort in.
While scrapbooking is a beautiful endeavor, it’s also a creative activity for even the artistically challenged (which, surmising the many shocked responses, includes me).
When I asked Micah if I could write this column about scrapbooking, this paper’s advisor piped up from across the room, “Scrapbooking! I love it — it’s the only craft I can do!”
Much of the intimidation felt in regard to composing a song and skill required to knit a blanket or paint a master copy is reduced with scrapbooking. This is partially because no one is going to ask you “what’s that supposed to be?” The subject of your masterpiece — the photo — is already present, you just have to add a few things to it. So without the pressure of normal art projects, scrapbookers still get to exercise their creative faculties without worry of being judged for their bulging seams or disproportionately drawn hands.
While pictures say a 1,000 words, it’s frustrating when someone fails to appreciate a trip or experience the way we did because we’re constantly trying to make them see what the pictures don’t show — the colors, sounds, smells or images lying beyond the boundaries of the frame.
Scrapbooking allows you to add those things in. Perhaps not in the same way, but adding in quotes, pamphlets,
tickets, or stickers gives you the power to share more of the narrative.
Macaela Bennett is a junior American Studies major. She is minoring in journalism through the Dow Journalism Program and is the editor of the Collegian’s City News page.
