A popular hobby lets people turn their photos and keepsakes into stories about their lives.
By SHARI MISSMAN MILLER
Published August 1, 2003
[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
Sandy Beck of Valrico, left, and Mindy Davis of New Tampa, center, work on their borders for a back-to-school page they are making as part of their scrapbook class.
[Times photo: Stefanie Boyar]
This page is an example of what avid scrapbooker and St. Petersburg Times reporter Shari Missman Miller has created.
SOUTH WESTSHORE - As a teenager, Erica Ridley saved memories. She kept concert tickets, Christmas cards and school report cards.
She made photo albums and kept stories she wrote in spiral notebooks during middle school.
On the day after her 18th birthday, her house burned to the ground while she was at work. She lost everything.
Today, at 26, she is rebuilding her memory collection by scrapbooking, a way of telling stories through pictures and memorabilia.
Ridley works on her albums and takes classes at South Tampa's only independently owned scrapbooking store, the Scrapbook Shoppe. The 2,010-square-foot store was scheduled to open today at its new location at 3662 S West Shore Blvd., between El Prado Boulevard and Euclid Avenue.
Owners Julie Bateman and Alexia Wax had to leave their store at Neptune Street and Dale Mabry Highway because developers plan to demolish aging buildings on the block and replace them with a more high-end retail center.
The Scrapbook Shoppe opened in August 2000. Bateman, a lifelong scrapbooker, joined a year later and Wax followed a few months ago. Most of their clients are South Tampa women in their 20s and 30s, though some come from as far away as Lakeland and St. Petersburg.
The store is one of the few in the area exclusively geared toward scrapbooking, also known as cropping. Michael's, which opened in June in Britton Plaza, and Wal-Mart also sell supplies but have a limited selection.
Scrapbooking involves preserving photos and other keepsakes in albums using decorative, thick paper called cardstock, stickers and other do-dads. To protect against yellowing, cracking and the deterioration of the paper and photos, supplies have no acid or lignin, an organic substance that binds fibers.
"You want your album to tell a story for you," said Beth Mariani, 31, an elementary school teacher and part-time instructor at the Scrapbook Shoppe. "When you are gone, it will speak for you."
Scrapbooking has been around as long as photography but it really didn't catch on as a serious craft until the late 1980s when the first scrapbooking supply company, Creative Memories, began selling photo safe albums and supplies.
Popularity increased in 1996 with the debut of the scrapbooking magazine, Creating Keepsakes. Today, the Utah-based publication has a readership of more than 500,000 worldwide.
Editor-in-chief Tracy White has a family scrapbook that dates to 1899.
"We have become more aware of the archival nature of scrapbooking in the past 15 years," she said.
"Scrapbooking goes beyond traditional photo albums. It incorporates photos, creativity and most importantly, memories."
Scrapbooking is the third most popular craft activity in the United States, behind cross stitching and interior decorative home painting, according to the Hobby Industry Association, in Elmwood Park, N.J. The scrapbooking segment of the crafts market has quadrupled in the past five years, said Don Meyer, HIA's consumer and public relations director. In 2002, sales of the products and supplies reached $2-billion to $2.5-billion, he said.
South Tampa scrapbooker Nicole Roberts buys cardstock, markers, scissors, glue and other supplies at the Scrapbook Shoppe. Three or four times a month she takes classes, which focus on different techniques or page layout.
"I love the classes because they allow me to preserve my memories in a unique way," she said.
She started scrapbooking last year after receiving scrapbooking supplies as a wedding gift.
A speech pathologist and devoted Gator fan, she spends most of her free time working on her albums. Her favorites outline her wedding and honeymoon in Squaw Valley, Calif., and her trips to Gator football games. She and her husband, Doug, have season tickets.
"I want my albums to tell a story," said Roberts, 30. "Looking at the pages helps me remember details I may have otherwise forgotten."
New to scrapbooking, Sharon Rook of Land O'Lakes drives about 45 minutes to South Tampa several times a month to attend classes at the Scrapbook Shoppe.
"I really enjoy the creativity of making pages in class," said Rook, 36. "I did crafts before, but never anything like this."
Twice a month, the Scrapbook Shoppe hosts crops - gatherings of scrapbookers to work on albums and socialize.
Crop regular Katherine Durkin, 45, began scrapbooking in 1997. She chronicled renovations on her house and trips to Atlanta for the 1996 Summer Olympics and to Memphis, Tenn., for Elvis Week.
"Scrapbooking has become more than just a hobby," she said. "I look forward to seeing my cropping buddies every other week at the store."
Her friend, Conchi Morrow, 35, has been scrapbooking for more than six years.
"I love the idea of being able to organize and show off creativity in my pictures," she said.
Like any other hobby, scrapbooking costs money. Completed books with minimal decorations start at about $50. More extravagant ones - those with extensive embellishments - can cost hundreds.
To many, the albums have no price tag.
Bateman, the Scrapbook Shoppe owner, knows people who have their books on a shelf next to the front door.
"In case of an emergency, each family member is in charge of saving a book," she said.
