Living in a day and age where scrapbooking has become big business and a page isn’t complete without elaborate embellishments, it is hard to remember a time when a scrapbook was simply a book filled with scraps of paper. Not purchased paper with themes, instead a visual story told with fragments of matchbooks, paper clippings and other free found objects.
Recently I was pleasantly reminded of this when I cleaned my craft room. I came across a box of old family photos and in this box was a scrapbook made by Diane L. (my mother) in 1954. The scrapbook tells a tale of nine year old Diane’s family vacation where they drove from Baltimore to Las Vegas. Not only does it capture a moment in my mother’s life, the collection of menus, matchbooks and free postcards acts as a time capsule in book form. Her scrapbook reminds the viewer that there was a time when every celebrity actually had talent and you could go to the Golden Nugget for a $3.50 prime rib and wash it down with a $.25 Ovaltine.
Here are some of my favorite “scraps”:
