Got Scrapbook Fever? Go Vintage!

Do you scrap? If you don’t, you’re one of the few who’ve escaped the lure of racks and racks of gorgeous papers, punches in every shape imaginable, ribbons and brads and bindings galore! Stamps and buttons and scallop-edged scissors! Crop-a-diles and Crickets and chipboard and glitter! AAAHHH! Stop me!

For me, I tend to believe that scrapping was just an inevitable progression from a childhood spent collecting and trading stickers. (Come on, admit it. I know my fellow sticker collectors are out there!) I loved to collect stickers and trade them with my girlfriends. Lisa Frank rocked! But what the heck were we thinking? [Insert soap box here.] My friends and I would spend our entire allowance buying all these stickers, stick them in these cheesy laminated sticker books and then decide to trade. So in our infinite wisdom, we would ‘carefully’ (I use that term loosely) peel each one out as we traded back and forth and back and forth… and probably a little back and forth some more. We all ended up with these pitiful-looking creased and bent stickers that never really stuck very well. But oh how we loved it! That and playing the card game, War (but that’s another story).

So back to scrapping. Believe it or not, I’m really not technically a scrapper. It’s true. Scrappers would probably call me a wanna-be. I dearly love and frequent the scrapbook section of every craft store within a 60-mile radius — but I don’t build scrapbooks. I think it’s a lack of patience on my part. What I DO do (poor grammar) is craft the scrapbook covers themselves. And I LOVE it. You can find my most recent creations at The Baby Gardner.

For me, this is the perfect alternative to scrapping. I can drown myself in all the fun of scrapping without the long-term commitment of building an entire book. The best part is that I can infuse my love for vintage in the covers of these books as well. I love to use authentic vintage cards and findings. It makes each one truly one-of-a-kind. And I cannot express my love for decoupage enough. I should own stock in Mod Podge.

I guess you could say scrappers and I kind of have this unspoken bond. I leave the expertise of building the pages to them and they honor my craft by putting their work in the books I create. Can’t get any cooler than that.