Scrapbooking dads: Can the craft industry attract the men it needs?

I finished my first scrapbook, which was of a special ocean cruise that I took. Yes, I am a MALE.
Current project is scrapping my Lighthouse photos.
My biggest problem is time and no room in the house.
Money doesn't have to be an issue, as I am minimum wage. Just cut and glue your pictures onto the page, your done.

Your right most men will not scrapbook, but the business is still booming and I would rather my kids look at photos and read my original handwriting for years to come. When you look at a photo album without journaling you might as well watch a movie without words. For beautiful pages you don't have to do the pages in creating keepsakes you can simplify it and still make it beautiful and the pictures are what always make the page. I am glad your knitting and blogging but I and alot of other moms are going to keep on scrapping..When I scrap I am doing it for my family and loved ones. Scrapbook Junkie in Georgia

Yeah.. Scott... Good luck with your lighthouse project. I am so glad a man commented on this blog... Time is a problem I have four kids and scrapping since 1997 and completed about 15 - 12x12 albums in the past few years and working on 2 more. I am about 3 years behind but catching up...

Scrapbooking on the web is the next big thing-it seems to me from the e-mail to my website in ref. to my photoart,poems pages . Advice to develop them by fans surely fits in the scrapbooking mode, and a creative developer can make a business of it.Hope someone does soon!

I love needleworking of all kinds, but I have mostly given it up for scrapbooking. It makes me very sad to read that the original poster thinks items made with yarn are more useful than scrapbooking. No matter how beautiful the project, the yarn will wear out. Those photos and stories (notice I didn't say the scrapbook decoration) will show your children and other family how much they are loved. Memories like that will never wear out. Even the time spent preserving the photos and telling the stories is precious - okay knitting is relaxing and rewarding too. But please don't say that scrapbooks aren't useful. They communicate love, and in this crazy world that may be the most valuable way you could ever spend your time.
Cathy from Texas

I asm glad to hear Scott is into scrapbooking, and simplicity is the key to keeping things to a reasonable cost. However, if you love your photos and want to have them for years to come, DON'T scimp on the albums. Buy only Acid/lignan free, never the cheap ones with magnetic pages. They will kill your photos. And please, please..don't GLUE them onto the pages. Scrapbook adhesive is cheap at Walmart and if someday you need to remove a photo, it can be done relatively harmlessly. Also, buy yourself some cardstock and start matting those photos. A little more time and money, but well worth it, and they will look so much better. And don't forget to journal...the most important part of scrapbooking. I have been scrapbooking for about 6 years and own enough supplies to fill a store and about 2/3 of them are totally unnecessary. Keep it simple, develop your own style, and love what you're doing.

I completely agree with Cathy, Melanie and Scott. Photo albums preserve our memories and helps us communicate our love to our family and friends and helps our future family understand their heritage and background through the photos and the journaling that we do. It communicates things that many people cannot say or have a hard time saying. It can help jog the memories of patients that have lost their memories due to illness. That is just a few reasons why photo albums are important. You can purchase the items that you "need" to get the album completed without having to spend a lot of money on stickers, paper, stamps, etc. You basically just need an album, a pen and your pictures to get the albums completed. My albums are all extremely simple - very little paper and stickers - mostly journaling about the events, which is the most important part anyways - passing on your stories to future generations.

I have to say I am appaulled at the narrow mindedness of the OP. Scrapbooking isn't for everyone, but that doesn't make it useless. Scrapbooking helped my speech delayed son come out of his shell and build his language skills. Scrapbooking has healed our family after the death of our son. Scrapbooking has given me a creative outlet I lack in my day job.

No one says your pages have to look like Creating Keepsakes. Scrapbooking is a work of HEART not art. You develop a style that works for you and your needs. I don't worry that it isn't perfect. I don't worry whether others will like it. I am concerned with chronically the lives of my family good, bad, funny, sad. It all makes us who we are.

It is fine not to like scrapbooking, but saying it is useless ...

I can see that when you knit that you have something useful and of value, but what exactly do you have to show for your "blogging".

Scrapbooking may not be for everyone, but it is a popular hobby. As with any hobby it's not for everyone and apparently it is not for you.

Personally I find my time is better spent recording and perserving my families memories and stories that tend to fade overtime or even are forgotten due to age, divorce, and illness.

Blogging for you (in this case) appears to a way for you to vent your resentment of trying a hobby that was not for you.

I hope your family and friends have more than this entry to remember you by when you are gone.

We own store in Texas, and we are happy to say that we've had quite a few male scrappers in the almost seven years since we opened. One of them is an engineer who got very interested in geneology when he inherited his family photos. (Turns out that he's related to a former governor of Tennessee.)
He actually taught heritage classes for us and helped people with the geneology research. Another one's wife has all the ideas, but he creates the pages. We have a lot of husband and wife teams that come in shopping as well. Of course, more than 95% of our business is still female, but men who are really interested in photography love to find ways to show off their work, and scrapbooking is one great way.

Actually men are getting more into creating albums. They are digital albums, called Storybooks! I am a Creative Memories Consultant and I do not believe in extravagant pages. Yeah they look nice but really the importance is to tell your story and preserve it with acid free, lignin free, and buffered products so your creation will last a lifetime. Definitely keep it simple and easy so you can complete your project. Anyway, Storybooks (digital scrapbooks) are amazing and are allowing men (and women) to create albums without the investment in stickers, scissors, and "foofy" things. Storybook creator is a free download and you create the scrapbook on your computer then you send it to CM Photo Center to get it printed into a beautiful hardbound book. It is a coffee table type book and it is delivered right to your door. Creating the book is as simple as dragging your photos into the pre-done templates and typing your story in the font(s) of your choice. If you are interested, check out my website www.mycmsite.com/jbrightbill and you can email me questions and/or download the free software. I have men customers who do this and enjoy it and I have done many myself. To create a book from start to finish can take 1 hour or more and they turn out amazing! And it is all printed on acid free, lignin free, and buffered paper. Check it out. Album Making is not just for women, with the digital technology we have today.

An acquaintance of mine who works for a scrapbooking chain helped me assemble a scrapbook for my wife and my 35th anniversary! While the first go-round was several hundred dollars, it finally accomplished what our 35 years never could. It brought together the most vivid memories and special moments in a format that now has everyone enjoying it when they see it. And now I am adding pages as the opportunities arise over the years with our granddaughters and others taking center stage. I still have boxes of photos and old photo albums, but the first book, and volume two just starting are considered an investment, not an expense. And if you haven't guessed it, I am a working grandpa!!!

I don't give a hang whether or not men get into scrapbooking, but calling it "useless" is a little insulting. For the $100 a month you spend on knitting supplies you could buy a whole bunch of knitted stuff at Wal-mart. Really -- do you NEED the stuff you are knitting? I won't even start to discuss the uselessness of the self-indulgent mass of blogs out that there that nobody gives a hoot about. Scrapbooking is a hobby. Most hobbies are useless. Your inference that scrapbooking is a useless hobby, and men don't do useless things was insulting to women. Men do plenty of things that are useless like hunting and fishing when there is a Winn-Dixie down the road where you can buy meat and fish already prepped for way cheaper than the supplies and expenses needed to hunt and fish. Ditto the whole carpentry thing -- how much does all THAT stuff cost??? My husband has a cigar hobby that is useless AND not good for his health.

I don't scrapbook, but I use the exact same materials to make my own greeting cards (except that the paper is thicker). It IS an expensive hobby, and to think I started it to save money! At $15 for some of the stamps, you can imagine what it takes to cover just the year's holidays. I hope the industry will cut back the costs because I fear that many people will have to abandon it due to the high prices. On the flip side, however, it's a wonderful way of relaxing, expressing yourself, allowing yourself to be creative, and sharing with others. I actually have friends now who HOPE they'll receive a homemade card on a special day.

I am fortunate to have a wife that is an avid scrapbooker. The memories she is preserving are priceless. I often go through the many scrapbooks with relatives and friends that come to visit. Everything in our lives is documented; vacations, weddings, all 5 of our children have their own life history in many books. Useless? On the contrary.

I see my mother twice a year. Each time she comes to visit she "catches up" with us by looking through our scrapbooks, often with tears in her eyes, no doubt filled with joy. I love my wife for this gift, and I'm sure the kids will appreciate it as well when they are older.

While I seldom scrapbook myself, I am intrigued by the digital scrapbooking. I wouldn't be one of the few men ever to attend a crop, but I can do a page or three with the Lifetimez multimedia software at my computer. And my wife thinks it's wonderful. I think that many more men will use this avenue to scrapbook than the papercrafts in the future.

If this intrigues you as well, you can see it at Scrapduo.com

I have a scrapbooking club and we have a male member. We have tons of fun with him and he doesn't mind being the only male for now. I also have another male friend who does scrapbooking with his daughters. His wife doesn't scrapbook, but she surely appreciates the time and attention he gives to this wonderful hobby.

I completely disagree with the original poster and am just a bit offended. I would never say to someone else that their chosen hobby is "useless". Anything a person does to relax and pursue a creative outlet is useful. To each his/hrt own as far what they choose to do.

I spent a lifetime believing that I was totally not creative or artistic. One night I agreed to attend a scrapbooking demo at a neighbor's house. She gave me some paper and stickers, and suddenly I was HOOKED! I completed 3 simple pages that night.The next day, I went shopping and instantly turned into a fanatic. That was 4 years ago, and I still LOVE it.I have tapped into creativity and artistic talent I never knew was within me. Scrapping has helped me discover a hidden part of myself and in the process, record my family's story for my children and their children, etc. It is anything but useless!

Mercy in South Florida

I've done scrapbooking for years and found it VERY expensive. My husband and my daughter really enjoys looking at the books and it great to look back through the years, especially since his mother has passed away.

I now have found a way to share scrapbooking with my husband by doing Digital Scrapbooking and publishing my scrapbooks in a professionally bound hard cover book.

It is simple. It can be as scrappy as you want or as clean as you want and no expensive stickers, embellishments, adhersive, paper, ribbon,and tags laying around the house.

I found a site where all of the art work is on-line and not clogging your computer memory and stores your photos for you. You can check it out at www.heartboundmemories.com

I am so glad to read that others remember that the reason for the scrapbook are the PICTURES and the STORIES. I love decorating my pages, but when the decorations are the first thing my eye goes to when looking at a scrapbook page, I know I've lost my real purpose for the endeavor -- Keeping Memories!

Not knocking the sitckers, papers, tools, etc. though. I've got a huge trunk full! The artistic side of this craft is stimulating and relaxing at the same time. My "day job" is one that sees very little "finished product" -- everything is a work in progress. Finishing a scrapbooking page and being pleased with the results and the memories it has conjured up is what make this a satisifying hobby for me.

Spreading The Love is most important; whether its a sweater or a scrapbook page. We give from ourselves.

I'm gay and I wouldn't scrapbook It's a real "chick thang"