Archive for August, 2006
Discover Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking is a new hobby that is currently taking America by storm! Some people have even remarked that scrapbooking meets are the quilting bees of the new millennium, where women meet to make pages and swap local news and gossip. What are the benefits of scrapbooking, and why has the hobby become so incredibly popular?
People have been making scrapbooks for more than a hundred years, but the scrapbooking hobby has only recently developed into a multi-million dollar industry. The first scrapbooks were collections of poems, letters, and other memorabilia. Often young ladies of the nineteenth century would create these collections, which were called commonplace books. Young ladies who worked in paper or cloth factories took the scraps off the floor to decorate their commonplace books, and this is how scrapbooking got its name.
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Scrapbooking Ergonomics Part I Scrapspace Organization to Save Your Neck
You’ve discovered scrapbooking and $500 later, with supplies in hand, you set up at your kitchen table to attack last year’s vacation photos. You cut, paste, stamp, and paint until you feel a pain creeping up your lower back and settling between your shoulder blades. You realize that three hours have flown by and you haven’t budged from your kitchen chair. The sun has set and the dim light overhead casts shadows on your workspace. You rub your eyes, wondering if you’ve waited too long to change out your daily contacts. You look around at your mess: Crate Paper’s spring line falling off nearby chairs; Hero Arts stamps and ink pads hovering precariously near the far left edge of your 6-foot-wide table; Sakura pens scattered among the carcasses of unwanted scraps of paper and ribbon. You still feel that twinge of pain in your neck, but you’ve proudly finished your first 12″ x 12″ page!
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Create a digital scrapbook
By HELEN MALANI
It seems that everyone I know is scrapbooking _ the documenting of life’s special events and memories. Someone is always chronicling something; a child’s recital, a bridal shower, a trip to Paris, a pet’s birthday.
Like many hobbies it can be time consuming, costly and require work space. Digital scrapbooking, the art of doing it all on your computer, allows you to flex your creative muscle while saving on time, money and space.
Shelly, a mother of three, took digital photos and was journaling (writing the text that accompanies her photos) on her computer, so going entirely digital was just a natural progression. “Everyone who sees my digital scrapbooks wants to learn how to do it, especially people with time constraints,” says Shelly.
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Check out our September classes at Big Picture Scrapbooking
Donna Downey, Every week, All year
Once again our Miss Donna has come through with some amazing projects, inspiration and down right F-U-N for her students. For $25 you receive her month of September classes… the ever-fabulous voice of Donna and colorful, step by step handouts that allow you to follow along on your own time without feeling insecure or pressured. “You are perfect just the way you create.” It is this refreshing philosophy mixed with all the energy and endless ideas from Donna that take your creative skills to the next level! Did we mention you can get all of this by the quarter too? $64.50 get’s you Donna for the months of October, November & December.
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Scrapbooking time helps fight cancer
By J.E. Espino
KIMBERLY — Tanya Dvorak knows there are more scrapbook aficionados in the Fox Valley than the handful who registered for her daylong workshop Sunday.
To be sure, it wasn’t the scrapbooking she wanted to promote when she began planning the event February at Liberty Hall, but the idea behind it.
Like her friends in Green Bay, who jet-ski through the Great Lakes annually to raise funds for uninsured or self-paid women to get mammograms done, Dvorak, an Appleton resident, hoped to bring her skills to the table for breast cancer awareness efforts.
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Kaboose’s TwoPeasInaBucket Named To Hitwise Top 10 List For Second Quarter Of 2006
TORONTO, Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Kaboose Inc. (TSX: KAB - News), the world’s leading independent online media destination for families, is pleased to announce that its twopeasinabucket.com property, acquired by Kaboose on May 11, 2006, has received a Hitwise Top 10 Award for the quarter ended June 30, 2006. During the three-month period, Two Peas ranked eighth in the Lifestyle - Hobbies and Crafts category.
TwoPeasInaBucket.com, the largest online scrapbooking community in the United States, attracts one of the most devoted online communities generating nearly 30 million page views each month. As the fastest growing hobby segment in the U.S., scrapbooking is a multi billion dollar industry that has quickly transitioned to the Internet. In addition to offering scrapbooking products, Two Peas offers its users a number of services that enhance and inspire their scrapbooking hobby. Continue reading Kaboose’s TwoPeasInaBucket Named To Hitwise Top 10 List For Second Quarter Of 2006…
Once an obscure hobby, scrapbooking is now in the limelight of crafts
It all started last year with a daughter’s 30th birthday.
St. Charles resident Jaymee Filline wanted to commemorate the milestone with a special present. A gift card or new appliance just wouldn’t do.
So Filline set out to become a scrapper. With the help of another daughter, 30 years of photos, some acid-free pages and a few embellishments became an elaborate scrapbook celebrating a lifetime.
“She cried,” Filline said. “She said it was the best gift we could have given her.”
A phenomenon that once brought to mind the crazy lady with the glue gun, scrapbooking has become a hip and trendy hobby in recent years. Scrapbooking industry retail sales went from $400 million in 1997 to $2.5 billion in 2003, according to the Hobby Industry Association.
“We’ve become more conscious about preserving our memories,” sad Vicky Feldman, manager of Archiver’s in Algonquin. The store also has locations in Bloomingdale, Naperville and Downers Grove. “We’ve learned how to preserve our memories.”
Boy, have we ever. There are the cutting tools. Matting. Adhesives. Acid-free pens. Protective spray for newsprint. Not to mention the wide array of embellishments and other decorations for practically any theme under the sun.
“It’s a huge creative outlet for me,” Feldman said. “It gives me a chance to express myself in another creative medium.”
But exactly how long is the road from photos shoved haphazardly in shoe boxes to a memorable scrapbook? An avid scrapbooker for six years, Melissa Hall of Cary said the most important part of the process is getting the photos onto the pages.
“All the other stuff is icing on top of it,” she said. “You don’t have to use all the stuff.”
Feldman said one of the best ways to get started with that first scrapbook is by taking a class. The free beginner class at Archiver’s allows wannabe scrappers to bring in three to five photos from the same event and leave with a completed page. The class also focuses on proper tools, choosing colors and different types of albums.
Patti Church, manager for the Scrapbooking Lodge in Elgin, said her rule of thumb for scrapbooking is that there is no wrong way to do it.
“As long as you put it on the paper and look at it and say ‘I like that,’ that’s the right way,” Church said. “It doesn’t matter what anybody says.”
Still, a little outside input never hurt. That’s why scrapbooking experts recommend hitting “crop parties” on Friday and Saturday nights. For between $10 and $15 at most local scrapbook stores, amateur and skilled scrappers can enjoy some food and share ideas.
“When there’s 50 women in here and you hit a road block, you walk around and look at someone’s page and say ‘Oh my gosh. Can I copy that?”
And remember that organization is an important part of any process. Both Church and Feldman insist photos and memorabilia should be placed into individual categories, dates, or themes.
Breaking the bank isn’t necessary. While the average scrapbook costs about $20, the accessories to perfect it can get pricey. The key, Feldman said, is self-control.
“You could spend thousands of dollars a year,” she said.
Filline, meanwhile, hasn’t put down her paper cutter. Since her first scrapbook, she made another one from a trip to South Africa to visit a daughter. When a couple she knew said “no gifts” for their 65th wedding anniversary, they received a scrapbook. She’s also started her own card-making business, inspired by all the neat things she learned from scrapbooking.
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Creative Memories to Expand into Digital Scrapbooking
ST. CLOUD, Minn. (Aug. 18, 2006) – To maximize resources and expand its presence in the digital scrapbooking market, The Antioch Company, the parent company of Creative Memories, will close its Sparks, Nev., facility on Oct. 20, 2006, and will transfer manufacturing and distribution operations to its St. Cloud, Minn., and Richmond, Va., facilities. Eighty-five employee-owners were affected by the Sparks facility closure.
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Share Your Scrapbook Pages on About Scrapbooking
One of the fun things about scrapbooking is sharing your finished pages with others. The layout galleries on About Scrapbooking give you the chance to share your scrapbook pages with other scrapbookers all over the world! Create a scrapbook page, or find a favorite layout in your albums, that fits the current page calls and follow the directions found in this article to send it in and share it online.
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Scrapbooking Company Adds More Jobs
(AP) St. Cloud, Minn. Scrapbooking company Creative Memories is adding jobs in St. Cloud, Minn. as it looks to expand its digital scrapbooking offerings.