With 25 million people practicing it on the other side of the Atlantic, scrapbooking is one of the most popular creative hobbies. Update on this activity which gives pride of place to aesthetics and expressiveness!
Quebecers sometimes speak of creacollage or scrapbooking to designate scrapbooking. These francizations fairly well describe the spirit of this creative activity whose starting point is photography. It is indeed around photo snapshots that the scrapper – official name of the person who practices scrapbooking – will organize his creative assembly. His objective:to put the said shots in perspective, letting himself be guided by a theme and mixing textures and colors.
He takes these from a repertoire of materials, some of which come from recovery. This is why we find the word "scrap" - meaning offcuts, leftovers, scraps - in the designation of origin, which also refers to "book", since the creations are recorded together in the manner of a book. In all, a scrapbook consists of a set halfway between a travel diary, an artistic portfolio and an album. Scrapbooking refers to all the techniques that we mobilize to achieve this creation.
If expressiveness plays a big role in the success of an original scrapbook, there are different techniques that are found in all scrapbookers. Familiarizing yourself with these basics is also a prerequisite for practicing this activity, if you want to get a taste for its artistic side and refine its touches. On pages each measuring 30 cm x 30 cm, we start by defining a theme that will serve as a guideline for the choice of shots alongside each other on the same support. Cutting is the technique most in demand in the staging of photos. The choices of shape are varied and some prefer to use cutting software so as not to spoil their shots. This kind of tool allows, moreover, to imagine more creative templates:outline of a country, sun, beach...
Others use the mosaic technique, or the interlocking of photos for more effect in the staging. This also mobilizes many texturization techniques such as the aging of the paper, the "Bargello", embossing, or even the discoloration of the clichés with bleach. RubberStamping, “serendipity” which uses scraps of paper to embellish the page, and stencilling are other methods widely used in projects.
Scrapbooking, in its modern form, arrived and gained notoriety in France in the early 2000s. However, this activity has much more distant origins. The 15th century launched the premises of this hobby, currently followed and practiced by millions of people around the world, with the illustration of literary works. The use of paper collage and painting to decorate books is traced back to this period throughout Europe, Persia and Japan. The first known scrapbook, supposedly from the end of the 17th century, is of German origin.
The name of scrapbooking would be in use since the Enlightenment when the activity was especially all the rage in the United States. At the same time, the French were engaged in the same exercise, referring to it as book crafts, collage or patchwork. Events promoting the activity enriched the following century:publication of the first specialized journal in Great Britain, publication of 2 founding books and above all the invention of the daguerreotype, in 1839. And in 1854, the Oxford dictionary officially incorporated the word "scrapbook". .
