So when and why did you start scrapbooking?

I was first introduced to scrapbooking in I think 2005. My uncle's girlfriend at the time was big into it, and she wanted to teach my aunt and I about it as well. My dad and uncle were going to her house to fix something, so she invited my aunt and I along as well so we could craft while the guys did their thing. I loved it! I didn't keep up with it for very long after that day, but it was always in my mind. I jumped back in, on and off, in I think 2012. It's been off for longer than I'd like but I've been dipping my toes back in with a traveler's notebook! I'm a photographer, and my photos need to live somewhere that isn't just a hard drive - might as well tell the stories, too.

I started scrapbooking in 2001 when I was 16. The year before I had gone on a class trip to Disney World (I was from Washington State) and one of the chaperones was a teacher I really liked. In ‘01 I took another class from her and she started showing me the scrapbook pages she had made from our trip to FL. I had a bunch of photos from that same trip! She invited me to a “midnight madness” event at the scrapbook store where she worked and I was hooked! I briefly switched to digital scrapbooking f49’ 2010-2014ish but I’ve always loved memory keeping.

Which wider op?  I did 2 as a girl and staffed 16 as an adult.  Loved them.  Still need to scrap them all too.

1995, I was trying to earn a medallion in church. I was told the time and work is equivalent to an Eagle Scout. One of the requirements you could choose was doing your personal history. A scrapbook store had just opened up in a neighboring town and I was hooked when I saw all the 8.5 x 11 paper, giant die cuts, and rolls of Mrs. Grossman's stickers. A natural progression for someone who had a Stuck on Stickers binder in the 80's.

refugeepee- ms. grossmans! yes!

kiera- how do you like the travelers notebook? I see them everywhere now but feel like I have no clue what's going on there. haha. But i'm interested!

1996.  One of the homeroom teachers in my son's first grade class was showing me her album and invited me to a party!  I have been scrapping ever since!

I have always scrapbooked. Started with these manilla paged scrapbooks that were sold by "dimestores." The CM thing passed us by for the most part, and the first thing I noticed was Paper Pizazz books of paper sold at a local craft store called Pat Catans. (Sadly they sold themselves to Michaels four years ago and Michaels shut them down this year. Just like they did other craft stores. Jerks) I wasn't sure what those books of paper were for at first, then I saw an idea sheet. I figured it out real quick after that. LOL I call how we currently scrapbook "creative scrapbooking" and what I used to do "memorabilia scrapbooking" since that was mostly glueing stuff onto those manilla pages. Photos went into those old magnetic photo albums! LOL

Mine is a long story. I am the 70's srapbooker.

Started scrapbooking when I was a little girl. I was serious about it. It was not a little girl's hobby. My Dad was a photographer and he would take all these pictures. Then he would buy the scrapbooks to put them in. The lovely scrapbooks of the day with the black pages and photo corners.

He never did anything with those scrapbooks but I fell in love with them. I would spend hours putting the pictures in and embellishing the pages. I worked very hard on those pages. They are still really pretty. Even though I was a little girl my family started looking at me as the girl to document our photograph's. I am really glad they did because I took documenting very seriously and it taught me a lot of life skills. I was lucky/unlucky because I grew up in a crafty family so I was surrounded by nice supplies. My parents going to craft stores back then was a three times a week thing.

One day when my Dad was at his favorite camera store I discovered these pockets to put photo's in. I loved them. I loved the binder. My Dad bought it for me that was the day I started "Project Life." Of course it was not Project Life but Kodak's pocket pages back then.

At that time I was also rubber stamping & an 80's stationery girl so I would decorate my pages with journal cards I made from my stationery and stamping creations. So sorry Becky beat you to that twenty years earlier, ROFL. JK.

Scrapbooking really evolved for me as an adult. I was a fast scrapbooker by the time I graduated from high school and went into adulthood. I really wasn't surrounded by anything scrapbooking related. What I learned was my own style and from books. Surprisingly even though I was self-taught little kid I knew what I was doing, ROFL. When I first got on the Internet I discovered AOL scrapbooking forums and then I discovered Peas.

Wow! Peas really taught me a lot. Like I became the slowest scrapbooker on earth, ROFL! I loved looking at all the different LO's but was never influenced by a certain style or felt like mine was not good enough. What threw my scrapbooking off- THOSE HEAVILY MIXED MEDIA EMBELLISHED PAGES! OMG! They were so popular back then and I could not do them. They were everywhere! You couldn't escape them. Ladies- You were so talented that did those pages. That is so much love you put into them. Trust me I am not knocking you. That was freakin art! Like all hobbies I realized that was my burnout period. I admit it was a terrible time for me. I couldn't scrap any more.

Then Becky came out with Project Life. My spark flared again. I have said so many times I am grateful to her for bringing pocket scrapbooking back. That was such a huge love for me. I never got into her kits. I am not being snarky but seriously everyone I really do not understand why so many cards of the same designs. I honestly think she created all those cards so you could share them at crops. I am the only scrapbooker in my group. There is no way I could share all those cards. I never paid attention to her kits but started doing my own thing.

Now I do a mix of pocket memory keeping and journaling. I am really happy with how it all evolved. A quick note to those of you that have burnout. I know it sucks and it feels terrible. I just want you to know when you get your spark again it will be amazing and you will realize that burnout was a good thing and part of your learning history.

Really enjoying these stories! @amayalylac, yours is so interesting!

I'm another stickers/stationary child, but had nothing to do with them.

An e-mail group of mine (pre messageboard and facebook days we would form e-mail groups!) introduced me to it. We had all been pregnant together and had babies in August 1998. They were talking about scrapbooking, and so I went and visited Michaels. That's all it took.

That group of ladies...some of us are still together on facebook, with our now 21 year old "babies". surreal.

When I was 4 or 5 years old, in the early 1970s, my Mom brought me a Poesi album from Holland. It's like an autograph album, but friends and family write little poems in it and you decorate it with little die cuts that are sold for them in sheets. I think this is where my love of scrapbooking started!

As a kid I kept a box of my favourite things in it, and there was lots of stationary in there. I loved pretty stationary. Then in my teens I started glueing newspaper articles of concert and movie reviews (from ones I went to) and other things that caught my eye - ahem, Duran Duran - into a cheap manilla paper big scrapbook album.

When I was 13 I took all of our family photos and made personalized photo albums for my 3 brothers (all older than me) - but kept only 1 or 2 photos for myself! The albums had categories like "Baby & Toddler", "Family & Friends", "Pets", "Places We Went", etc. I wrote in the dates and everything. I even had a page with all of their school photos from Kindergarten to whatever grade they were in at the time - from Grade 12 down to Grade 9. They still have them. I've asked to borrow them so I can scan the photos for everyone to share.

For my honeymoon to the UK in 1997 I put our train tickets, airline boarding passes, maps and other memorabilia, and photos into a traditional scrapbook with black pages. I wrote on white strips of paper and glued those in, too.

Then in November 2000, when my son was 11 months old, my Sister-In-Law invited me to her house for a Creative Memories party. I had already been perusing the scrapbook aisle at Michael's but had no clue how to get started, so I was thrilled to discover CM and all of its wonderful things. I was so hooked! My SIL and I scrapped together for years and it was awesome. I branched off of being strictly CM after about a year but she never did. Once I found 2Peas in 2001 I never looked back.

I'm the only one that still scrapbooks that I know of, and I love it more than ever. My scraproom makes me so happy.

Here's a photo of a Poesie album: Album and here are some sheets of die cuts for them (when I was little I thought they were stickers that lost their stick somehow, lol): Die Cuts

I worked in a camera shop that had an attached scrapbook shop. I would have to help ladies in the scrapbook store find items and ring them up. I really didn't understand what it was or why people were buying patterned paper or asking for super specific themed stickers. Slowly, as I got involved in helping prep classes, I started to "get it" and decided to try making a page or two myself. Within a couple of years I was designing and teaching classes, had created our store's kit club, and did a lot of the ordering. I really miss that job!

my grandma showed my mom how to scrapbook so she showed me when I was a kid. it was no photos but stuff from trips ppostcard s everything in the 60s I showed my kids how to scrapbook when they were kids in the 80s.. then I stopped someone invited me to a Creative memories crop in 97 & I beecame smitten with it all & I am still smitten with it all

Meelleek 's story is pretty much my same story.

I kept old fashioned photo albums for photos, scrapbooks for memorabilia and diaries.  I went to a craft show in about 1998 and someone had a CM album on display and she was a consultant.  I recall it had a photo cut in a circle and it looked so nice as a contrast on the page.

I checked out the cost and I said, "No way.  I have way too many albums to convert them all to this style at that cost."  

Then I saw KMart had a 'kit' and it had a little how-to from Memory Makers.  I asked for it for Christmas.  It was so basic that when I found out about scrapbook stores that were springing up I replaced everything.  They built a Michaels in my town and it had 2 aisles of scrapbook stuff.

A scrapbook store about an hour away was showing ads on TV.  No computers yet to look things up, so I used the phone book and found a scrapbook store in my town!  I signed up for a crop and that was that.

I scrapped 8.5x11 originally and went back to that about 10 years ago except for special albums.