I’m a bookbinder, not a scrapbooker, got it?
I’m half-joking here. I rail on scrapbookers because I hate all the lobotomised cutesy-wootsey, yummy mummy stuff that goes along with the production of scrapbooks — some of which are the most Gawd-awful-looking piles of glitter and ribbons and plastic you’ve ever seen in your life.
I don’t want to be mean, but it’s this type of thing: “I stamped with a HEDGEHOG stamp!!! Yes, ME!! I know, IT’S CRAZY!!!!“ that makes me wonder if some folks have fallen off the top of Maslow’s pyramid into some sparkly pink hole of having too much time and nothing important to do.
I call most scrapbook products “creativity for the non-creative” — packaged-up kits you assemble into exactly the thing in the picture on the front of the package. And the sheer amount of stuff you can buy is staggering. On the show Glee, they make fun of the lead character’s wife having a room full of scrapbooking paraphernalia, but then you tune into the shopping channel and see women fawning over acres of these preassembled bits and pieces, referring to each one by its precious name (“The Kidizzlix Flapdazzler”). And if you’re really serious you can get a container for it all about the size of a fridge.
I, on the other hand, am a bookbinder. This is a venerable trade extending back to the beginnings of modern thought and democracy. I craft each book from first principles, stitching, cutting and…
Oh, who am I kidding?
In every art, there’s some phony division between one camp and another, which to outsiders must seem completely arbitrary and capricious.
I’m reminded of the Grade-D-yet-brilliant movie Shakes the Clown, about an alcoholic clown who’s constantly getting into fistfights with mimes: Mimes are just pretentious fakers, you see.
I’ve collected an embarrassing array of scrapbooking tools in my search to create visually compelling books. A stamp to create an interesting text pattern here, a deckle-edge ripper to make torn pages there… And I’m happy with the results…
…But it’s such a slippery slope into that pre-fab creativity.
I suppose it’s like using a computer: it’s just a tool, until you start identifying with the thing, thinking it’s “cool” or better than another machine, or loans you any personal qualities, or that you need the next and the next one to preserve that halo of new wonderfulness. Instead, you remember all the creative possibilities the tool makes possible, then focus on that instead of acquiring the next bit of tat. The tools are a vehicle for content; it’s only vulgar or pointless when the the tools themselves become the focus of the activity.
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