My Scrapbook

By Robin Snyder

I have had several scrapbooks throughout my life. Some I have completed and some I have not. What was I trying to accomplish with these books? For the most part I wanted to record or preserve an event or occasion, such as being a girl state representative, graduating from college, my wedding, or the birth of my daughters (which really came in the form of a baby book).

That is what scrapbooking was really invented to do, record details of our lives. This form of recording is actually very old. You could say it goes back to ancient times when people drew on rocks or other objects as timelines of their cultures. It seems to me to be part of human nature to record our history.

Paper made recording details of our ancestors lives easier and saw the first developments leading to the modern-day scrapbook. These first books were but blank pages that people could write on or place notes or scraps of things that were important or needed to be kept. These books were called commonplace books. Many used them as a notebook of things that interested them, what in today’s time we may call a bullet journal.

The printing press and publication of information changed the world. It allowed the development of the commonplace book to be used to organize all the information that was being read and seen. People used it to write down what they considered important, from quotes of scholars to bible verses, to recipes. It was not a personal diary of people’s thoughts and feelings but a collection of “scraps” of information. Some of the first scrapbooks were the family Bible. People would place records of births, marriages, and deaths in the Bible pages. Later, some Bibles were even printed with blank pages to record these events. With the increase in the printed material available to the public, people began to keep post cards, recipes, and advertisements and place them in bound blank page books. These scraps of memorabilia created the first “scrapbooks”. The word “scrapbook” was officially used in the 1800’s as a noun. In 1872, Mark Twain invented and patented the first scrapbook for retail sale. A bound book with adhesive on the pages. All you had to do was wet the glue slightly and adhere your item. He was thought to have made quite a bit of money on these.

The photograph was the next thing that revolutionized the scrapbook. It wasn’t until the invention of the Brownie camera, in 1900, that photos began to be popular in scrapbooks. Photos went from being time consuming to take to being able to “snap” a picture in one moment. That is where the Brownie camera made it’s mark in taking “snapshots” of everyday life. People were now adding snapshots to their scrapbooks and soon a lot of scrapbooks were almost all photos.

In the 1980’s, scrapbooking took a commercial turn. You could now buy a variety of scrapbooks and a variety of stickers and embellishments for your book. There were magazines being published on how to start your scrapbook, stores were cropping up with all the supplies you could possibly want. You could attend scrapbook parties which were very popular in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Photography has once again changed the course of scrapbooking. Digital photos are so readily available that getting photos to your scrapbook is easier than ever. With so many adaptations to pictures these days with filters, editing, and stylized images that it has now become a unique art form. Many create their own books with their own art and memorabilia in them to reflect their lives for their families

While the types and techniques for scrapbooks have changed, what has not changed is the desire we have to record our history. How we do that is up to the individual but almost all of us have our own “scrapbook “of our life. I would encourage you to share with your children and family your life through a scrapbook and to teach your children how to record their own.