photo courtesy of Cathy Zielske
Troubling news from the scrapbook industry
Simple Scrapbooks and Digital Scrapbooks magazines have folded. The All My Memories retail store has gone out of business. Daisy D's is closing its doors this summer, and Scrapworks has stopped production with the exception of their Exposed line. Michaels is on a financial “deathwatch,” with bonds trading at a tenth of their value. CHA (Craft & Hobby Association) attendance is down. LSS's (local scrapbook stores) are shuttering. The whole scrapbook industry is in a major downturn, one that started many months before the economic collapse of fall 2008.
Asking Cathy
All this distressing news leaves me wondering just what the future holds for scrapbooking as an industry. I spoke last week with Cathy Zielske, until recently the art director of Simple Scrapbooks and still one of the superstars of the scrapbook universe. Five years ago, her book Clean and Simple Scrapbooking helped launch scrapbooking away from cutesy sentimentalism and toward graphic art. What is her take today on the future of scrapbooking?
“It seems like such a big question that I'm not even worthy to answer,” she demurred. Having always shunned product trends, she feels “out of touch.” But in my conversation with her, I discovered that she is indeed at the forefront of another major shift in scrapping.
Bits&Pieces tells stories (but not about scrapbooking)
From the very beginning, Cathy eschewed excessive use of products to focus on the words and the photos. While she currently scraps only occasionally, she continues to unite pictures and stories on her popular blog, Bits&Pieces. The advertisers on Bits&Pieces are from the scrap industry, but she rarely writes about scrapbooking: most of her posts are wry reflections on her daily life.
“My life is very ordinary, but ordinary life is very entertaining,” she explained. “Even when it's boring.”
“I think sometimes I should throw in scrapbooky stuff, but it would be a little disingenuous, because I'm not sitting around doing scrapbooking,” she told me. “I just have a love of stories, and that's the blog.”
Cathy Zielske's success in the blogging realm positions her to lead the next generation of scrapbooking: digital storytelling.
“My first passion was writing,” she said. “I've always loved keeping journals and diaries, up until I got married and then I started being happy and stopped writing because I didn't have any angst anymore.” Now she posts several times a week on her blog and “tweets” several times a day on Twitter, but, she said, “I still want something that I can print out or hold in my hand or compile at some point into something that's not just cyber-records.”
Converting cyber-records to scrapbooks
The widespread use of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and blogging sites demonstrate the urge people have to communicate their own narratives. In many ways, it is this same impulse that has made scrapbooking so popular. Cathy Zielske intuitively recognizes that connection. Later this year she plans to teach a pair of online classes that will help scrappers tell their stories in fresh and innovative ways.
“Scrapbooking as a definition keeps getting broader as we as storytellers get more digital and get more diversified,” Cathy said. One of her online classes at Big Picture Scrapbooking is titled “Everyone Can Write a Little,” and focuses on the 140- to 160-character “tweets” and Facebook status updates that, combined, can narrate daily life.
Filling up on estrogen
Her other class in the works is tentatively titled “You: the Abridged Version,” a remake of the “Encyclopedia of Your Ordinary Life” class she taught at Creating Keepsakes University. Listening to women at CKU share their stories “was the most powerful and estrogen-filled experience, because it was all about women's voices.”
She taught it three times, with registration limited to 50 people, so only 150 scrappers have taken this class in the past. Now she will open it to as many people as possible because "women have stories to tell and voices to be heard, and this class will be the ideal vehicle to do just that."
“We tell stories so we remember who we are and what we're grateful for and what's important to us,” Cathy Zielske explained. In a way, Cathy's writing classes return to the roots of scrapping, but through innovative digital media: not digital scrapbooking, per se, but in scrapbooking the stories told digitally every day.
Comments
We're going to see a huge wave of digital scrapbookers who begin making their scrapbook pages at online scrapbook sites such as CropMom.
I would like to address the issue of advertisers. They miss the mark of what their article is suppose to convey. I saw one page in particular which had fancy things on it and I looked at it and didn't know what they were trying to say; whats more, I didn't even know what the product was. They should show the product and give examples of what you can do with it and tell me where I can purchase it. If they want us to purchase the product we at least must know what it is & what it does & where to purchase it. That's basic.
There are still plenty of us out there who love the texture and feel of real paper and embellies. I think a mistake many companies made was assuming that all newcomers to scrapbooking wanted digital products. I get monthly kits from a fabulous company called Club Scrap and because of them I have learned about scrapbooking, cardmaking and creating handmade books. I have no plans to go digital at all.
Pam: thanks for your comment on my story about Cathy Zielske. I, too, think of myself as a paper scrapper. I don't even use the computer to journal very often. What I thought was cool about Cathy's comments, though, is that she wasn't talking about digital scrapping per se. Instead, her class focuses on creating a physical scrapbook from stories originally recorded digitally. I think the parallels between a scrapbook and a personal blog are clear, but as Cathy said, it's important to have something besides a "cyber-record." Others have printed books from the content on their blogs, but Cathy is the first I know of to popularize making a scrapbook from microblogs, such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. She told me that she doesn't consider herself a digiscrapper, although she likes printing things from her computer. I love that she is staying true to the core of scrapbooking (pairing pictures with stories), yet innovating in the source of those stories.
Cathy is an innovator and amazing leader in the scrapbook world. Her newest class is sure to be a huge hit since the scrapbooking industry has recently invaded twitter and facebook with a vengance! It is where we all chat, share, and support each other beyond our blogs... it is fun and true to the moments we are living in life. Kudos to Cathy for understanding that as journaling and record-keeping device that we are all using everyday!
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!