The History of Scrapbooking

Thanks to the internet, the opportunity to create digital scrapbooks is rich and impressive. From the wide variety of scrapbooking crafts available online to the digital scrapbooking ideas that are so easy to find, creating a professional quality digital scrapbook is a skill that can be learned by everyone. The next generation will probably be stunned to learn that at one point in history, creating a digital scrapbook was impossible.

Digital scrapbooking is a popular phenomenon that seems to have come out of nowhere, but the truth is, the evolution of basic scrapbooking to digital scrapbooks was a logical progression based on the accessibility of paper and eventually, digital media. In fact, up until the advent of scanners and advanced digital media, we had been relying on hard copy creative scrapbooking since the 15th century.

The idea of scrapbooking began as a way to store memories when paper became an affordable commodity during the 15th century. At this time, scrapbooking was pretty basic, nothing like the outlandish scrapbook pages we see now. It was simple a method for placing photos and memorabilia on paper. However, since pictures were too expensive for most people to have access to, most of these books were simply based on handwritten messages from friends.

As time progressed, the trend of collecting friendship memorabilia on paper started to pick up and develop. In the 16th century, it was more popular than ever to create scrapbooking pages similar to the idea we later used in our yearbooks - friends and classmates would be placed into scrapbook templates with room for comments, remarks or drawings. This booklet could be kept and cherished for years; an early example of interactive media.

To get to what we recognize as today's scrapbook, the price of taking pictures and the accessibility for common people had to evolve. Several hundred years passed before taking pictures became affordable and simple but once this happened, creative scrapbooking took off. Since the 18th century, creating beautiful volumes has been a way for artistically inclined folks to store visual memories.

When digital scrapbooking first came onto the market, it was a much slower and more complex process than it is now. Those who were interested had to upload all of their pictures into a digital site (moving at a speed much slower than the lightning speed of the internet today) and create their digital scrapbooks from there.

Today, there are hundreds of sites available to download scrapbooking tools, digital scrapbooking ideas and all of the fun embellishments that make a digital scrapbook unique. One day, generations may be stunned to realize that digital scrapbooking was not always the bustling industry it is today.

In fact, with advancements in digital media, the possibilities behind digital scrapbooking may be unlimited. As history has proven, the arts will develop based on the availability of the media to create them. As long as the technological advances are made available and affordable for the masses, the new strides in digital scrapbooks will not be far behind.