Scrapbooking - A History

In the 15th century there were Commonplace books, these books were used to record information, for documenting vital events and journalizing ones experience in life. Commonplace books contained records about medical formulas, poems and prayers. As times past by, commonplace books had become like newspapers for articles, food recipes and illustrations. Commonplace books were for sharing ideas and thoughts of the people at that time. It was their way of expressing what they felt and what they wanted to do with their lives.

There were also friendship journals that were created by some groups of people to illustrate and to record important happenings in their lives, others were making these journals to portray the important life events of someone they loved and they gave it as a present to their loved ones. Victorian women were creating signature albums and this is what they called their visitor album. They gathered poems, signatures, memorabilia, scrap cards, hand writing and photographs of their friends and families. This was their way to share memories and cherish those fun events of their lives, such as weddings, births, christening and other important events people wanted to remember.

In 1972 Mark Twain, author of the famous Huckleberry Finn, discovered a way to improve making a scrapbook. He came up with his Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook. This Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook, which contained pre pasted pages, netted him a lot of profits.

In 1980, a person who was an avid fan of scrapbooking shared her new ideas on how to journalize important events and occasions in her life, she is none other than Marielen Christensen. Marielen used acid free papers and she shared 50 volumes of her family history in Utah for a conference on records. There were lots of people who loved her ideas of journalizing family photos for the future that they set out to create their very own scrapbooks of their own precious memories.

In the modern day, a lot of people are now into scrapbooking because of the fun and entertainment that this craft delivers to them. People are making scrapbooks to journalize most special events and occasions. The only difference of scrapbooking of today and the past is that, scrapbookers of today are using those scrapbook embellishments that makes their scrapbooks more attractive and entertaining to read while the scrapbookers of before are just using their hand writing to record the events in their lives.