Scrapbooks: Life Before Pinterest

Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and publicly declare my disinterest in pinterest.  I do admit to having an account, but I have four boards with no more than 5 each.  I understand that most of the world is totally enthralled with this site and spends hours upon hours searching and cataloging images.  I understand that it makes you feel organized after you've saved 57 new crafting techniques for future reference.  I get that you have 43 healthy snack ideas at your disposal for school lunches.  And anytime you want to set perfect Victory Rolls, you can scroll through your 39 options.  But really, pinterest just doesn't do it for me.  For me, personally, I feel like it's (a) a huge time sink that could be spent more productively and (b) a guilt-trip to end all guilt-trips.  After merely one hour spent pinning images, I could have been in the sewing room or kitchen or garden and actually have something to show for that hour, instead of just a head crammed full of cool ideas that, in all likelihood, I'll never get around to doing and just feel even more guilty.  *phew*  Stepping off my soapbox now...

So what in Heavens name did we all do before Pinterest?!?  We had scrapbooks, my friends.  Now I'm not talking about the current, uber-expensive, hoity-toity scrapbooks of Today.  I'm talking about the Old School, cut and paste scrapbooks of fifty years ago.  Heck, more like 30 years ago.  As soon as I could hold a scissors, Mom outfitted me with an oversized doodle pad and a bottle of Elmer's.  I collected magazine pictures, paperdolls, soup can labels, birthday cards and anything shiny that caught my eye and glued them all, willy nilly, into my doodle pad.  Voila!  A bonafide scrapbook was born.  And it was good.

Sadly, we have gotten away from the gritty, willy nilly-ness of scrapbooking.  Everything these days has to have matching papers, stickers and embossed embellishments.  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's time to reconsider the lost art of Cut and Paste.

Last weekend I took the kids to the church rummage and brought home three fabulous scrapbooks for 25cents each.  The two plain ones were completely filled with newspaper snippets, but the fancier Boy-Meets-Girl book is blank and waiting for my daughter's high school years. 

I carefully dissected the two books and took out all the bits that I liked.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that there was nary an inch of empty space.  The housewife that meticulously filled these pages did a precise job.  She had How-To's, craft projects, recipes and embroidery designs to ying-yang!

 

Ever wonder what to do with those old buttons?

Have too many bottle caps laying around?

Perhaps a new vanity and stool made from barrels would be a fun project?

Most clippings were from the late 1940s and early 50s.  A few especially neat articles talked about war rationing and how the Thrifty Housewife could donate her metal headboard to the scrapdrive and use the footboard at the top of the bed instead.   

a big thank you to my sheep salt shaker for assisting

Well, my refurbish job started with fitting in new pages cut from 12" cardstock.  And then I grabbed the gluestick (sorry, Elmer) and pasted away.  My pages aren't quite as crampacked as the original book, but it's all about personal expression anyway.

I also had several 1962 LOOK magazines from which I snipped fancy advertisements to compliment the everyday usefulness of making your own bottle cap mud scraper. 

I included a collection of snap cards.

After several hours of cutting and pasting, I started to get a little punchy.  I began to pair the "international trend setter" with Creamette.  I doubt whether Jackie ever boiled a pot of noodles in her life.

Perhaps my favorite page is this 1962 Pream ad lording it over my birthday card from last month.  My mother sent this lavish Gone With the Wind card (one of my lifelong obsessions) and wrote inside, "Eat all the cake you want!  Your 18" waist is gone forever!"  Nothing like a mom to bring you crashing back to reality.

My scrapbook is a work of art, complete with handwritten notes from my children, quirky photos from three years ago, sock monkey stickers, Sunday funnies, fabric swatches and dressmaking notes.  Anything that comes across my desk is far game.  And while I try to organize the pages somewhat, it still is just a hodge-podge of images.  I love the tactile-ness of the book and the yellowing of the ads.  I'm considering subscribing to a few farm newspapers just to get the Economical Housewife section. 

And perhaps my scrapbook isn't too far removed from pinterest.  It is still a collection of my interests, albeit far less organized.  But somehow it feels more folksy, more home-grown, more me.  And if this appeals to you, it might be time that you toss aside the fancy-edged scissors, the vellum papers, the die cutters and go Old School shears and glue!