Many people these days are involved with scrap booking or scrapping as it’s sometimes known. They use the craft for all sorts of purposes from cards to travel and family history. While I’m quite visual and like crafts, it’s just a step too far for me to add another hobby to my family history obsession. Scrapping these days is not as we knew it when I was a child, as evidenced by the plethora of shops catering to the craft.
Among the bits and bobs my mother gave me when she moved was an old scrap book of mine from when I was a child. I was interested to see the diversity of images contained within. There are photos of royalty back when Prince Charles was my age, and QEII was still a young woman. There are characters from literature, with Dickens and Shakespeare featuring prominently…I doubt at that age that I had the faintest idea what that was all about. Angels, flowers and animals get frequent representation and I’m pleased to see there are even a couple of aviatrixes. Surprisingly there was even quite a few holy pictures available as well.
It takes some winding back of the mind, to remember that when I was a child there was no internet, no pinterest or instagram, and magazines were something rarely purchased. We illustrated our school books and map drawings with produce and industry relevant to the regions. It took some doing to sleuth out the necessary images.
Do you remember having scrap books like this? Do you still enjoy scrapping?
Family history across the seas 
What great pictures! I remember a few of those but mostly as you say we drew pictures and coloured them in. If one was very lucky there was the occasional magazine to cut up. Mum kept all the greeting cards that arrived so they too were a source of pictures. The occasional paper show bag could be cut up to illustrate a ‘product.’ The silvery paper from Easter eggs was flattened and put to good use. If Clag (glue) was too expensive or not available there was always the homemade paste, a combination of flour and water. I’ve dabbled with some digital scrapbooking but really don’t have that artistic gene to produce a worthwhile product.
Thanks for the memories.
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Thanks Carmel…you’ve reminded me of other sources of pictures…and the flour and water glue. Mum really loves craft projects so she probably sleuthed out some of the images from who knows where.
I did draw pictures as well but art absolutely was not my strong suit 🙂
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I had scrapbooks, but nothing as fancy as those. Mine were more like Carmel’s, I drew and coloured in, made dolls from paper and dressed them with ‘glued’ on fabrics, snippets of ribbon, or whatever else I could scrounge. As well as water and flour ‘glue’, we used egg white, that worked quite well and didn’t smell at all, after it dried.
My lovely ‘older’ friends all over town collected bits and pieces for the ‘crafty’ girl, so I wasn’t short of material. Then there were also the chickens and their (mostly) discarded feathers, though I will admit now to sometimes loosening them if I needed a particular feather. Funny, Mum always knew when I did that. I think the hens told her.
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Chris, I can well imagine you beavering away as a little girl with all your craft buts and I had a good chuckle over the poor chooks 🙂 I suppose in those days people were more inclined to share (and ask) for sourcing bits and bobs….it wasn’t expected that everyone had surplus.
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I wouldn’t ask, but these lovely ladies were interested in what I created from scraps, so they gave me all their ends of skeins of embroidery threads, odd bits of lace and odd buttons, broken strings of beads, scraps of fabrics, old linen, etc. In return, I would make them needle books, bookmarks, fabric covered cardboard boxes for trinkets, etc. I was never idle.
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I’ll bet they loved their gifts too 🙂
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A topic right up my street! I remember two early scrapbooks I made – one of the Queen’s coronation in 1953, and one where we had o make one t school on a Commonwealth country – (sorry Australia – I chose Canada). Like you the Royal Family in the 1950’s was a popular subject and I cut out pictures from newspapers and my weekly “Girl” magazine, Then I moved onto ballet, music, art, history, and historic costumes, and after a year of working in the USA 1965-6, a scrapbook of my travels there – I still have all these. From scrapbooks I went onto albums to feature my many postcards on similar themes – museums and historic houses a great source. It seemed such a waste just to throw out the many lovely Christmas cards we received, so I have compiled four scrapbooks on the seasonal theme, featuring Xmas traditions, quotations, poems, carols etc. – and have written about these on my blog. My scrapbooks are nothing fancy in terms of graphic design, but there is no doubt the advent of the computer improved my presentation from my initial handwritten notes. And now? Well I have abandoned the cutting up and glueing and set up a PInterest page, reflecting very much my interests. Scrapbooking has given me enormous pleasure – I recommend it!
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You certainly took to scrap booking 🙂 You must enjoy looking back through your scrap books and remembering all the special times. I never kept up the practice but I do enjoy Pinterest. I must look up your pages…are you under Scot Sue?
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Thank you, Pauleen, for your response. Re your Pinterest question, I think you may have already found my site, but it is at https://uk.pinterest.com/susanpdonaldson/
When I set it up, I never thought of using the ScotSue name, but there is something to be said for keeping that name across my sites, so thank you for the prompt .
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Yes, I did indeed find you and enjoyed having a look at your pins.
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I used to love scrapbooks when I was a child and rather wish I still had them. The pages you shared with us are really beautiful and very tidy, I don’t think mine ever looked like that.
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