Scrapbooking Hobby Becomes Creative Memories Business

Yakima Herald:

So many ways to crop, mount and enhance them. So many things to say about the day they were snapped.

“There’s no rules,” says Tami Johnston, a 38-year-old Creative Memories consultant from Selah. “It’s personal preference. Sometimes, it just depends on the photos and page layout.”

This year’s Central Washington State Fair is taking scrapbooking to a new level: the second level of the Agriculture Building. For the first time, the fair is offering free make-it-and-take-it classes on the art of preserving photographs and memories, telling stories through images - old and new - and paper crafts.

That’s because scrapbooking, says fair activities manager Ruth Anglin, “is the new thing. Everybody scrapbooks now.”

The trend gained popularity in the late 1990s. Since then, scrapbooking has become an industry that generates more than $1.5 billion in annual sales of products, according to the Hobby Industry Association.

“It’s so much more than a hobby,” Johnston says.