About

Scrapworthy Lives is created by Stephanie Medley-Rath. Stephanie holds a doctorate in sociology and wrote her dissertation about scrapbooking. She has worked in the scrapbook industry since 2003 as a local scrapbook store employee, direct seller, and now blogger. She also is a sociology instructor at Lake Land College. You can read about her adventures in sociology at stephaniemedleyrath.com.

Who is Stephanie Medley-Rath?

Stephanie created her first scrapbook in 2002 as part of her duties as a club secretary. That summer, she traveled to Europe for the first time resulting in many more photographs and piles of memorabilia. She chose to scrapbook this trip. She managed to travel to Europe for a second time that year (and sadly, has not been back) and decided to scrapbook that trip as well. She went to the big box craft store to find an album and buy some adhesive. When she left the store she saw a scrapbook store and found an album she liked there. She joined their mailing list. They had a job listing and as a semi-poor graduate student, she jumped at the chance to make a bit more than minimum wage and a discount. So, in 2003, she began working in the scrapbook industry. In 2004, she had to cut back her hours once she completed her Master’s degree and accepted full-time work elsewhere. Eventually, she started graduate school again with the goal of researching scrapbookers for her dissertation. While working on her dissertation, the local scrapbook store closed. She then became a direct seller to see what that was all about and to continue to get a discount on some product and to keep her feet in the industry. She left that gig 18 months later when she decided it would be a good idea to actually get her dissertation complete so that she could graduate. In August 2010, she successfully defended her dissertation and graduated with her doctorate in sociology. Yes, you can earn a PhD in scrapbooking. She launched Scrapworthy Lives in 2010 and has been blogging about her research ever since.

This site uses limited advertising and is moving to eliminate all advertising from the site.

Stephanie has appeared on the Paperclipping Roundtable and has guest posted at Simple Scrapper and EcoScrapbook. She also contributed to EcoScrapbooking: Crafty Ideas for Eco-Conscious Scrapbookers.

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