I'm really taking a risk with this one, because I know scrapbooking is very popular. (One of my best friends is a scrapbooker!) But hear me out.
It's undeniably true that a well-designed scrapbook page is a gorgeous work of art, as well as an heirloom quality keepsake that your family and descendants will treasure. There are a lot of really nice scrapbook pages out there. I'm sure there are plenty of ugly ones, but that's true of any craft.
No, the problem with scrapbooking is everything else about the hobby. From an external, cold-heartedly realistic perspective, scrapbooking is the art of buying a ton of stuff you never use, and feeling really bad about it.
Scrapbookers buy a metric ton of stickers, special glues, fancy papers, foils, scissors, book pages, bindings, markers… the sheer volume of scrapbooking supplies is astonishing. And where do you store all that stuff? How many giant plastic storage tubs do you have to fill with glitter and printed sheets of paper before you cry "Enough?"
The problem is that buying scrapbooking supplies doesn't make you a scrapbooker. A lot of people seem to confuse one activity (shopping) with the other (creating a scrapbook). Who can blame them? Shopping is fun! Actually finding the time to sit down and make a billion decisions about the precise layout of a page - yeah, well, maybe tomorrow. Maybe this weekend. Maybe next weekend. Maybe never.
I'm going to estimate that only .01 percent of scrapbooking supplies ever actually get used in the creation of a scrapbook page. The other 99.99 percent of the supplies just take up room in your house and weigh down your psyche with the collective guilt of all the things you're not busy scrapbooking.
It's telling that Martha Stewart is one of the biggest names in scrapbooking supplies. Martha is practically the patron saint of "insanely fussy activities that no one has time to actually do." Scrapbookers, I urge you: Get real. Donate all that stuff to charity and live your life unburdened by the guilt of not having scrapbooked everything For Posterity.
Image courtesy Flickr/shimelle
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