by Sandra Devera

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: June 17, 2010

Since taking up scrapbooking, I have often wondered "Why is this so addictive?" What makes an adult collect colored papers and stickers and become a connoisseur of delicate cutting tools and adhesives? It's easy to find reasons as to how scrapbooking has become popular - improved tools, computer technology, media publicity, and an army of mentors marketing the hobby have encouraged its spread. But there are subtle, psychological reasons as to why scrapbooking is so popular.

You can bring order out of chaos.

There is a deep satisfaction in taking a stack of photos, museum brochures, ticket stubs and postcards of a vacation and instead of having them sprawl in a drawer or file folder, have them neatly arranged between scrapbook covers. In a world of random, haphazard events and activities, there is within the covers of a scrapbook an intoxicating illusion of order, sequence, and stylized control. The response to "How was your vacation?" can go from "Crazy - I hardly know where to start" to "We saw and did so much!"

You can make the intangible, tangible.

Digital photography is fast, efficient, and provides tremendous creative control for the person sitting at their computer. But when the power goes out, the hard drive crashes, the photo files get corrupted, or you are away from your computer, where's the evidence that what you say you captured on film was ever there? For any born before Generation Y there is often a mistrust of electronic media and a security in pages you can turn.

You can stimulate a variety of senses.

Show someone a single photograph and you share a single moment in time from a particular perspective. Take a scrapbook page of photos from various angles and include the feather that fell from your hat at the reception, the pressed flower from the bridal bouquet, the scented lace that went round the shower favors, and the scraps of paper upon which the groom wrote his vows and you have something that stimulates vision, touch, smell, and hearing as you read the vows and hear them again in your mind.

You can enjoy selective memory. 

You can put a lovely sticker at the corner of the beautiful photograph of your relative stuffing their face with pineapple souffl without including any of the nasty comments or hurtful looks she gave before the party was over. In fact, you don't have to include photos of her at all if you don't want to remember she was there. I've noticed in my own scrapbooking that I take photographs of happy times and tend to leave

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