The Local Scrapbook Store
I worked in a local scrapbook store for five years. I worked probably 12-25 hours a week the first couple of years and then scaled my work way back to accommodate my non-scrapbooking career and graduate school. I really stopped working there once I became pregnant but what sealed the deal was that the store closed. I am still sad the store is closed. The store was in a major U.S. city and since then two other local scrapbook stores in that city (and its suburbs) have closed. I have also moved several hundred miles away from where that store once was and I miss my scrapbooking friends dearly. In rural Illinois, local scrapbook stores are hard to come by. I miss having a local scrapbook store. I miss having a group of close friends to scrapbook with (though I have begun attending one monthly scrapbook gathering). I am also finding that what I mean by scrapbooking isn’t necessarily the same thing as what other people mean by scrapbooking. I sometimes get strange looks when I mention cropping with others…
What I have learned though, since I began seriously pursuing my blog is that there is a vast world of scrapbooking online. I knew this already, or so I thought. Really, I thought that the scrapbooking community online was fairly limited to uploading your layouts for feedback and chat rooms–two things I have little interest in doing but can understand why others find them appealing. The Internet, though, is great because it does a couple of things: provides reinforcement that what you are doing is not completely insane and provides new perspectives. I can read blogs by people who scrapbook in ways that are vastly different from my own or are even geared towards beginning scrapbookers and I almost always find something I can take away from the experience.
While the industry seems to be shrinking offline, it seems to be booming online. It seems like everyday I learn about another blog about scrapbooking. I enjoy reading these blogs. What has been most surprising, however, is the number of scrapbooking classes and tutorials that are available online. This is really exciting! The local scrapbook store may be going the way of the dinosaur, but the online world is only growing. I have only just begun exploring all the online educational resources and think that I will be expanding my B&B Reviews (published on Thursdays) to include some reviews of these courses. There are so many of them and most do cost money, that I think it would be helpful to find out which ones are winners and which ones are losers. If you have taken any online scrapbooking classes, will you please comment below with the website where you took it at so that way I can start building a list of education providers to review? Thanks!
The Local Scrapbook Store is Now Online
What all this leads to is an argument that the community one used to find at at the local scrapbook store can now be found online. Do you agree? Is the local scrapbook store now online? Do you find your scrapbooking community online, offline, or some combination of the two? Do you shop online for scrapbook supplies? Which do you prefer: online shopping or in-person shopping? Why? Will there be a return of the local scrapbook store? Is the local scrapbook store endangered or extinct?
Ways to get more out of Scrapworthy Lives:
Like Scrapworthy Lives on facebook
Follow scrapworthy on twitter
Subscribe using the RSS link on the homepage
Stephanie Medley-Rath is a sociologist and scrapbooker who studies scrapbooking and memory keeping. Scrapworthy Lives is a blog focused on her sociological analysis of scrapbooking, with a sprinkling of posts about Stephanie's own scrapbooking projects.
