How To … Learn to scrapbook at home

Love to scrapbook but just can’t find the time? Enter the Scrap-A-Faire, the first and only online scrapbooking expo that offers busy working and stay-at-home mothers and others a chance to learn new techniques, swap ideas and connect with other enthusiasts without ever leaving home.

For a $5 registration fee, participants can log on to scrapafaire.com and participate in the five-day seminar, from Wednesday to Sunday. Once registered, they can “attend” $15 seminars such as “Digital Scrapbooking 101″ and “School Albums in a Snap!”

There are also chat rooms to mingle with other visitors, and vendors offering the latest in the industry.

“The Scrap-A-Faire gives you an opportunity to do all the things you’d like to do at a consumer show, but in your pajamas, at 2 a.m. if you’d like,” says Melissa Inman, editor of Scrapbooks Etc.

The online expo is not a new concept. Just a few years ago, traditional trade-show producers fretted that online expos would edge them out, the same way e-commerce vendors spooked brick-and-mortar stores when they first hit the scene.

But physical attendance at trade shows is now down for the first time since 2003, according to data compiled by Tradeshow Week, so the scrapbook-fair organizers wanted a new way of reaching the public, especially since scrapbooking has become big business.

According to a 2005 study by the Craft Hobby Association, the industry is estimated at $3.7 billion, with one in four households having at least one scrapbooker.

For more information about the scrapbook fair or to register, go to scrapafaire.com.

– The Associated Press

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/305181_stayhowto27.html