Scrapbooking-Take a peek, you won't lose your man card I promise

nodoubt · #1 02-04-08, 11:24 PM

When I first found this forum I saw the hobbies and interests topic and my girly side did a little giggle of excitement. Then I came in here and it seems more gear towards the guys of the board, which means my scrapbooking or jewelry making hobbies probably hold little interest to you guys. Well too bad, you get to read about them anyway!

Learn from my hobby threads, use them to impress your girlfriends or wives. Think of all the brownie points you could earn. I promise I won’t tell.

I started scrapbooking when my little boy was born. As a new mother I took rolls upon rolls of film. And in his first six months of life I had completed a 6 inch photo album. Excessive, maybe, but I’m a proud mama what can I say. When I was about 6 months pregnant with my first child a friend of mine decided to tug at my heartstrings and invited me to a scrapbooking party. I walked out of that party spending almost 400 dollars! Boy if I knew then what I know now.

For my 400 dollars I had enough scrapbooking paraphernalia to make maybe 20 scrapbooked pages. And even then I didn’t have just the right sticker for this page, or the wrong color of paper for that. So guess what I did, I spent more money! I later found a store dedicated solely to scrapbooking, and again, spent more money.

I tell myself that discount stores didn’t have the selection of scrapbooking materials that I needed. I had to have specific stuff. I was told that if I used any other paper than what I was first sold my pictures would all fall apart in time. The paper and anything else touching a picture had to be free of acid and countless other things. This made a 20 pack of “safe” paper a bargain at 20 bucks a pop.

I soon learned that places like WalMart sold the exact same kind of paper, labeled the same way, no acid and none of the other harmful toxins. There I could get packs of 100 pieces of good quality scrapbooking paper for about 5 bucks. Do you see something wrong with this picture?

The first rule you need to make sure your loved one that likes to scrapbook knows, is that expensive is not always better. These fancy scrapbooking companies that are out there play on your fears that your pictures of your first born, or that special vacation will be ruined if you don’t use their newest and latest products. I have pictures of my Great-Great Grandparents, they are still perfect looking and they weren’t attached to any kind of special paper.