The Early History of Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking has a very interesting history. It is a part of literary history and dates back all the way to 1598. This posting will explain the earliest history of scrapbooking. The information provided below was gathered from the scrapbooking organization “Pages of the Heart”.

The earliest forms of scrapbooks dates back to the philosophical, religious, and rhetorical discussions of Aristotle and Cicero and their pupils. Scrapbooks then became popular during the Renaissance period. During this time, there was an overflow of culture and information that needed a place to be stored. As libraries and philosophical schools became more popular, many literary-minded people copied poems and other passages that had moved them into blank books.

In 1706, the philosopher John Locke focused much attention on the commonplace book in his 'New Method of Making Common-place Books' manual. His book taught the proper technique for the preservation of proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches, and other forms of written or spoken word. This paved the way for the modern day idea of journaling.

In 1769, William Granger published a history of England with extra illustrations of his text as an appendix. Later, he expanded on his idea by including blank pages which readers could use to add in their own illustrations or prints as desired. This process, known as grangerizing, came to mean any book that was rebound into a different edition with new additional prints, letters, or other memorabilia. These types of books were also known as extra-illustrated books and were the most direct predecessors to the scrapbooks we are familiar with today.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the first well-known American scrappers. He saved newspaper clippings from and during his presidency and put them into a series of albums for future reference. Other people during this time period saved notes, news articles and other clippings, illustrations, craft instructions, and even diary entries into homemade albums with wallpaper and cardboard covers. Some folks who could afford to 'waste' books in their collections actually pasted their ephemera, printed paper memorabilia like tickets or playbills, onto old book or catalog pages.

The albums we are familiar with today came into existence in the early 1800s. Along with Granger books and commonplace books, people in the 1800s kept diaries, journals, and friendship albums. Friendship albums were almost exclusively owned by women and kept a lady's favorite quotes, poems, calling cards, and hair weavings in one place. Hair weavings, which started in Germany, were intricate weavings of pressed ribbons and flowers into a friend's cut strands of hair to display in an album along with a poem or remembrance of that friend.

This concludes this post about the history of scrapbooking. There will be more on the modern day history in later posts.

Getting Started

Creating Keepsakes magazine online (http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/) has many great ideas for getting started on your first scrapbook. Below are a few of the ideas I found most helpful!

1. Sort your photos into themes or topics and select a set to work on.
2. Select 2-3 colors of acid-free paper or cardstock that will work well with your photos.
3. Pick one photo to be the main focus of your page.
4. If needed, crop your photos. This will allow you to cut out unnecessary backgrounds, fit more pictures on one page, and enhance the focal point of a photo.
5. Select photos to mat. Think about using a mat for the focal point photo to highlight it.
6. Add journaling so you can remember the who, what, and where of a photo. Also think about adding your feelings to help make a richer memory.
7. Add a few extras like stickers or other embellishments.
8. Arrange all items on your pages and use acid free adhesives to adhere.

Throughout your scrapbooking think about the type of album you wish to create. If you want to create a chronological album, be sure you have an album where you can add more pages to it. If it's a scrapbook for a specific event like a family vacation, a smaller scrapbook may be more apprpriate. If you have many photos and don't think you will scrapbook them all, think of a theme for your photos such as "places I've visited". This will give you a starting point and make the process less intimidating.

If you would like to learn more about some of the materials you will need, watch this video for the basics http://video.about.com/scrapbooking/Must-Have-Scrapbook-Supplies.htm