Paper Crafts
Twenty, Twenty-five, Maybe Even 30 years ago . . .
I was at my favorite craft store.
This was when scrapbooks were the “in thing.”
For me, a scrap book was not a photo album, but a book where you saved newspaper articles, ticket stubs, pressed flowers, printed programs and flyers . . . Maybe those photo booth strips of silly pictures you’d take with your friends . . . maybe even those fortune telling cards you’d get from a machine . . . or even tokens from the county fair . . . Just junk . . . but they were treasures to you at that time . . . It’s now emphemera. A fancy name for junk collected, that seemed valuable for a short time.
Back then you could buy designer papers by the sheet and there were special cut-outs and embellishments available to buy to dress up your scrapbook pages of family vacations or family holidays . . .
Papercrafting has come a long way . . .
There are cutting machines, our computers and printers have come a long way since then, as has the internet.
We can buy designer paper, still . . . or we can download it and print it out on our card stock . . . We can buy all kinds of bling to go along with our scrapbook pages or even make our own scrapbooks, mini-albums, cards . . . centerpieces, gift boxes . . . etc.
Many papercraft hobbies have become a business. It’s amazing how times have changed . . .
I shouldn’t be surprised or amazed, actually . . . Some things grow rather than die out. We do love our hobbies and paper crafts have been around for centuries . . . We always think we’ve discovered something new and exciting only to find that it has all been done before. Maybe not as easily as today, but it has been done before.
I like papercrafts with a purpose . . . boxes . . . books with secret compartments . . . 3-D Haunted Houses with a secret compartment . . . even cards with a slot for a lollipop . . .
Then . . . I started thinking . . . the pop-up cards . . . I’ve always loved pop-up books . . . even those sugar Easter eggs with a scene inside . . . or the image I saw in a book of Alice Through The Looking Glass . . . Do you remember the old View Masters . . . and the 3-D Movies . . .
We still have 3-D Movies . . . we can make our own pop-up books and cards . . . we can make all kinds of 3-D houses and whatever with paper for displaying in our homes for holidays and for everyday.
We get motivated by seeing things others have done . . . and we must try to do it for ourselves . . . We can always find instructions on YouTube . . . or we can figure it out for ourselves and create our own YouTube video tutorial to share with others . . .
And, of course, there are machines and dies and clip-art . . . SVG kits . . . things to buy and things to make from free printables . . .
What I thought about scrapbooking 25 to 30 years ago has changed . . . for the better . . .
There’s a woman on YouTube who tells a story about attending a scrapbooking workshop . . . it was something suggested by her boss years ago while she was working for a company . . . She couldn’t imagine why he suggested she take this workshop . . . Now she has her own papercrafting business in her own home . . . Probably making more money than she did out in the work force.
Even at that time, while attending the workshop, she couldn’t see the sense of it . . . but now . . . It was a turning point in her life.
I remember my cousin telling me about her new Cricut machine and the cartridges she bought . . . all the paper crafts she could make with those die-cuts. All I could think about was the expense and the collection of all those cartridges . . . But now . . . I’m thinking things through differently.
For some of us, it takes time to decide what it is that we want to do . . . to make . . . to create . . . 
I looked at the Silhouette Cameo for years before purchasing one. I’ve looked at the Big Shot for years before purchasing it, too. I didn’t know how important it was to be able to emboss paper . . . or to have templates and a machine that would cut them out . . . The Silhouette Cameo can do a lot of cutting and is great for clip-art cutouts, too. I thought this was all I really needed . . . it was a definite answer to avoid the cutter of dies, etc. But, there are times when embossing is necessary . . . yes, Silhouette has a machine for that . . . But, I wanted something else . . . something I’d been fighting . . . The Big Shot . . . especially when I discovered Karen Burniston’s YouTube Video Tutorials for making pop-ups and sliders . . .
It’s necessary to have a space in your home for your crafts . . . it could be sewing or needlework, or even paper crafts. I have a friend who is into film making. She did a lot of it with advertisements for her furniture store. She got her kids and their friends to participate in her ads . . . A forerunner of YouTube Videos now . . .
We’ve come a long way . . . or is it just an easier way?
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now . . .
Then, looking back to all the time I’ve . . . I was going to say “wasted” . . . but it is a process . . . not a waste of time . . .
It is about learning . . . personal growth . . . deciding what it is we do need to open and fulfill that creative outlet within . . . We do need to express ourselves . . . in some creative way . . .
This reminds me of an Amazon Pilot for a series called Interestings . . . It’s an Amazon Prime Video thing . . . It’s about a group of people who got together at a camp for “creative kids” with acting, dance, art, music . . .
This group or certain members of the group are still together and meet up years later . . . which is kind of a regular thing for them — not a reunion thing. It’s how their friendships formed over the years . . . You may have a different “take” on it . . . It all depends upon one’s perspective at the time . . .
This all seems applicable to life . . . In the beginning there is a quote . . . Life if understood backwards . . . But we have to live it forwards. I may have messed up the quote a bit, but the concept is there.
And quite applicable with hobbies and papercrafts.
Thanks for stopping by!
Sharon
Oh, if you haven’t jumped onboard yet with papercrafts . . . you may want to check out these links:
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Until next time,
Sharon
