There is a right way and a wrong way to lovingly and creatively preserve memories, a teacher on the subject says.
By BETH N. GRAY
Published August 5, 2003
SPRING HILL - Remember the glue-on-the-back corners used to mount photos in the black-paged family album? The way the corners eventually fell off?
Or remember the sticky cardboard on which photos were positioned under a cellophane-like sheet? Notice how the edges of the cellophane eventually curled, photographs became unglued and the album fell apart?
Neither of those techniques cut it in the latest scrapbooking rage that has been developed to cater to America's obsession with holding on to the past.
Today's photo album enthusiasts have even turned "scrapbook" into a verb. Whole aisles of craft stores are devoted to scrapbook materials. Scrapbooking is a home-party theme. Not surprisingly, trained specialists offer classes in helping senior citizens and others preserve their memories for posterity.
Old scrapbooks were ill-suited to do the job for which they were created, said Ida Palmer, a local consultant for Creative Memories of St. Cloud, Minn.
"If you play with them," said Palmer, "they're going to fall apart." And the materials used in old scrapbooks have a shelf-life of about five years, Palmer told two students recently at her initial Friday evening class at the Senior Citizen Center of Hernando County.
Senior citizens such as Ethel Zorn, keepers of family heirlooms and ancestral memory, are always looking for ways to safeguard and display their pictures.
The Spring Hill resident has been putting together scrapbooks for some time. Zorn compiled photo albums for each of her five children, giving them as Christmas presents.
"Now I'm doing the grandkids," she said. "I had so many pictures when I got down here, and now I have more," explained the Connecticut native who relocated to Spring Hill five years ago."I never go anywhere without my camera."
With such experience, why would Zorn turn up for in a scrapbooking class?
She learned about the class when she met Palmer at the center.
"I'm game for anything," said Zorn. "I like to get out of the house, too."
Great scrapbooking begins with being selective instead of being sentimental, Palmer said. According to Creative Memories' four-step process, people like Zorn who own lots of photos can help themselves by being more selective. If you've got four poses of you and your grandchild taken at one time in one place, you only need to select one for your album, Palmer said.
Once the photo is selected, you don't have to scrapbook the whole photo. Many amateur snapshots include lots of sky and ground around the focal subject. Crop, or trim, them, Palmer urged.
"When you cut out what you don't need, look how much extra space you have," she said, displaying sample pages.
Creative Memories sells trimmers, punches to round corners systematically and die-cut tools.
"Never cut anything historical because then you destroy the value," Palmer cautioned. While scrapbooks are about keeping pictures, those images become almost meaningless to future generations if they are not accompanied by identifications, captions or descriptions, a process Palmer calls journaling.
"I'm sure we all have pictures in our family and we have no clue who they are," Palmer said. "That's why I feel this is important, I don't want my grandkids or great-grandkids to look at my picture and not know who I am."
Although her company sells punch-out alphabet letters, Palmer urged students to pen their journals in longhand. Descendants will gain an insight and feel a greater connection to the album-maker through her handwriting, Palmer said to her all-female class.
The best pens to use are those used for signing federal legislation. The ink doesn't fade. Pages should be acid- and lignin-free, so they don't yellow or brown, Palmer said.
Sounds easy enough. But Lydia McMonigle, who says she has never attempted a scrapbook, was a bit overwhelmed. She'd brought several photos of her late husband, her son, grandchildren and nephews. Since McMonigle had thrown away all the other family pictures after her husband died, she didn't think she had enough photos for an album. But Palmer had a solution for her, suggesting McMonigle compose a single page and frame it.
An album need not be limited to photos. Consider including postcards, certificates, diplomas, licenses, Palmer said.
And Zorn urged McMonigle to start taking more photos now.
"Seeing is believing," she told her friend.
And once the photos are in the scrapbook, there are ways to make them standout with borders, stickers and embellishments. Palmer showed off a page of black and white photos of her family's soda shop in New York. She'd brightened it with stickers of colorful lollipops and taffy twists.
"The mission is so important," Palmer said of scrapbooking. "(It's) to teach how to preserve photos and memories to show how people lived their lives."
Monthly hands-on scrapbooking classes are tentatively planned at the senior center at a cost of $5 per participant. Palmer can be reached at 683-3903 She will present demonstrations for civic organization meetings at no charge.
