Digital Shutters

Photo: scrapbooking.com

Scrapbooking is as American as American quilt. Deeply rooted but rarely seen. Like American quilt, scrapbooking is a vanishing art among the young, especially in the big cities. But just like American quilt, the young ones appreciate a good scrapbook when they see one.

You may think teenagers nowadays do not bother to make scrapbooks anymore, and you may be right. They don’t want to make them, but they giggle when they see their baby pictures in there. They get a kick out of seeing how they looked as a little kid scared stiff left on a carnival ride alone. The grown ups too are having a blast each time someone points to their pictures in bell-bottom pants and psychedelic art when they were teenagers themselves.

As a treasure trove of memories, a scrapbook is a valuable part of the whole family inheritance. More than just being a photo album, a scrapbook is also a journal of important family events, a history book, if you will, of a family’s passage in time.

That is why it is important to include some notes in a scrapbook. It is a known fact that photos are routinely discarded by the third generation because they no longer recognize those characters in the old photos; such a waste, because photos, like vintage wine, become more valuable with time.

People steeped in the art of scrapbooking recommend writing a few notes, anything to say, whether tivial or grand, and you shouldn’t even mind how your grammar or spelling comes out, don’t worry, it’s a personal scrapbook and it comes out better that way. Words to go with the pictures make the photos relevant even after five generations.

Scrapbooking may be aided by today’s computer and the Internet, to make it easier to produce and share photos with relatives and friends, but the best scrapbook are still made with good old craftsmanship, with pen and paper and scissors and paste. Nothing beats the high resolution display of the written page, and the random access of pages that you can flip by hand.

And don’t worry about your teenagers not making a scrapbook today, make one for them. They’re just being too busy with their youth. In time, they will make one too for their own children.

scrapbooking, memories, family, photos, album