For scrapbookers, these effects need to be preserved, displayed, celebrated and shared.

A handful of retail chains and independent craft stores in San Jose are dedicated to providing not only unique scrapbooking materials such as acid-free paper, special shape-cutting scissors, stickers, and embellishments like paper punches and lace borders, but also expertise, classes and social events.

Out of about five scrapbooking stores in San Jose, Lucia Guerriero says she prefers Keepsakes, a scrapbooking store at 2259 Lincoln Ave., to other locations because of its larger and more diverse selection.

She got into scrapbooking about six years ago, after she helped co-edit a yearbook for a Christian elementary school in Milpitas. She's completed one scrapbook so far and is now making another.

"I just made the first one for myself. It mainly has pictures of my friends and family," she says. "I'm always adding to it."

Guerriero's main hobby is making invitations for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and baby showers. For her sister's baby shower she made 35 cards with a Winnie the Pooh motif.


Scrapping down memory lane

Jodi Buda, a seven-year Willow Glen resident, opened Keepsakes: The Ultimate Scrapbooking Experience in July 2000.

Scrapbooking for her was just a hobby at first. She was a stay-at-home mom and a consultant for Creative Memories—a craft supply company that also promotes scrapbooking parties—for only a year when she got to the point in her 'hobby' where she was getting midnight calls from desperate scrapbookers needing advice.

She recalled patronizing scrapbook stores and having trouble perusing the narrow aisles while pushing a two-child stroller, so she made it a point for Keepsakes to have wide aisles as well as a large selection.

"There are so many stay-at-home moms in Willow Glen who come in with their strollers, and I wanted to make sure they had plenty of room to move around," Buda says. "I didn't want for my store to be someplace where people come to just shop. I want for them to have a creative experience. I didn't want this to be a stop-and-go thing."

Photograph by Sean Penello Gathering Scrap: Keepsakes Assistant Manager Adena Griffin helps customers chose from an array of items found on the shelves to create a scrapbook of memories. The store's wide aisles make browsing an easy task for parents with strollers.

On Friday nights a handful of women meet for the store's weekly Girls Night Out, which costs $10 a night. Several scrapbookers gather in the store's spacious work area from 6 p.m. until midnight.

"Here you have all the space you need," says Casey Adrian, a Keepsakes employee who attended a Girls Night Out to work on a scrapbook for a vacation to Hawaii she and her boyfriend took in 1999.

"This store has a more open feeling," says scrapbooking instructor Shannon Corpuz, who has taught at the store for three years. "Everyone else has you closed in."

Corpuz has been scrapbooking for about five years, ever since she saw a friend's scrapbook. She had seen other scrapbooks and knew about Creative Memories' books but wasn't impressed until she saw one exceptional design and said, "Hey! I can do that!"

Corpuz' first scrapbook was a chronicle of her daughter's first year of life.

Anita Crisp is also a Girls Night Out regular. She prefers Keepsakes because it provides a lot of room and table space to spread out materials.

Crisp became a Girls Night Out regular in March 2002, soon after a friend invited her to a Creating Memories party.

During a recent Girls Night Out session, Crisp was making Christmas cards with a snowy landscape, trees and snowflakes.

"Somebody may get this card, pull the stuff off and reuse it," Crisp says. "The people who get these cards are people who I know will appreciate the work that went into making them."

She adds, "Or they'll probably put it in a scrapbook of their own."


From mind to paper

Scrapbooking, like any other hobby, is as much about the process as it is about the results.

"It's just a feeling that you can't explain. Some people aren't as compulsive about it. Some people do it just to do it," Crisp says. "Some women will sit here all night and just do one page the entire night. And then we get the women who'll sit over there and they just want to get their work done and whip out 30 pages. And there are women who sit and struggle for ideas. I usually get my second wind around 10 o'clock. I'll sit here for hours not doing anything. Then, all of a sudden, I'll suddenly whip out six to eight pages."

And, Crisp adds, sometimes a person will walk by someone, notice what they're working on and offer to share ideas.

"You start helping people with stuff and then pretty soon you're sitting at their table while you're doing your own stuff."

"It's a creative outlet and a social outlet as well," Corpuz says.

At Girls Night Out, discussions normally diverge from scrapbooking to other topics, like kids, relationships and television.

"Meeting here is a spin-off of the quilting bee," Corpuz says. And friendships like the one Corpuz and Crisp share begin to develop.

"We've gone out to dinner," Crisp says, "We email each other all the time."


Where to begin

Everyone at Girls Night Out will tell you that for the scrapbooking novice, walking into a craft store can be an overwhelming experience.

Guerriero's advice is to look at the samples that the stores have on display and note how they're arranged and organized. From there the novice can follow their example or borrow some creative element such as a page layout or sticker arrangement to help start the process.

For beginners, Corpuz advises grabbing a handful of photos, spreading them out and then arranging them, either chronologically or by theme.

"Just start small with that group of photos. Focus on that and get that done. It can be so overwhelming to walk into a scrapbook store. I mean, there's so many products and there's so many things you can do." Corpuz says.

"I've known people who didn't have a creative bone in their body" who became good at scrapbooking, Crisp says. "Even if you're not familiar with scrapbooking and you're not creative, you can still make something cool. I've gotten several people started in my family and they're all hooked."

Corpuz says that many beginning scrapbookers organize an album chronologically—beginning with childhood photos and working toward the present—which she warns is a daunting strategy.

"Start small; try to stay focused. That's why people start doing theme albums, which focus on specific events or subjects rather than eras," Corpuz says. "Because when you get your grandmother's box of photos it can be mind-boggling."

As people get more involved they become more creative and develop their skills and art, Corpuz says. "But everybody's different. Some people are very basic. l try to stick as many photos as possible onto a page."

Another strategy is to start a book involving the present and make new books that regress chronologically, Crisp says. But she prefers to develop her skills creating cards and making albums that progress from childhood to adulthood.

"To me the most important things, like your wedding, should wait until the end of the learning process," Crisp says.

As with anything, scrapbooking has an individualized learning process—everyone learns and develops their skills at a different pace.

"In less than a year, Anita has come so far," Corpuz says. "It took about four years to develop my skills and start doing quality work."


Scrapbooking 101

The Creating Keepsakes company sponsors regional scrapbook "universities"—called CKU—featuring seminars that teach all the latest tricks and techniques.

Corpuz says she's always wanted to enroll in a CKU seminar but she hasn't had the opportunity and there are no classes taught locally.

But Crisp definitely wanted to enroll and get her advanced degree in scrapbooking. She went to Los Angeles for four days in October. Her tuition was $295—not including airfare or hotel—but the event included bus tours to local scrapbooking stores.

"There's a graduation ceremony, and you get a piece of paper that says you went to this thing. It's the hokiest thing, but it was a blast," Crisp says.

Crisp says that out of the hundreds of women who attended there was just one man. He enrolled because his wife had recently died. He wanted to learn how to make scrapbooks to chronicle his wife's life for his grandchildren.


It's 'shear' manliness

Buda says that men are scarce in her store, and Adrian says that men who do come in only buy supplies for their wives or girlfriends.

"Some men come in and like it but they don't want to admit it," Buda says. "They still think it's a girls' hobby."

Buda has thought about creating a more comfortable environment for men. She is thinking about a men's night out or some kind of promotional campaign.

"You know how bars sometimes have a 'ladies drink free' night? Well, I'm thinking maybe a 'men crop free' night."

Buda carries a line of "masculine" products, such as dark-colored paper and stickers of wild game, shotguns, rifles, camping equipment, football, baseball, hockey, and so on.


Preferring pix over pixels

With the advent of digital photography, CD-ROMs and websites, treasured photographs can be preserved indefinitely. Why place photos in scrapbooks?

"It looks better," Corpuz says. "I do keep a lot of my photos stored digitally, and I've made slide shows, but I prefer keeping some in a scrapbook," Corpuz says.

Scrapbooks with acid-free paper preserve photos longer than store-bought albums, which usually have magnetized pages that cause photos to fade.

"We do put our photos on CD," Crisp says. "But there's something about holding them in your hand and embellishing them to create that memory, the special memories that you have and want to keep forever. And each page tells its own story."

Besides, "preserving is not sharing," Buda says. "I mean, when you want to share your memories with someone, who wants to have to go to a website or stare at a laptop? It's not fun; it's boring."


Never-ending inventory

Crisp says that scrapbook stores stock new items every day.

With all the selection and seemingly overwhelming array of printed paper, stickers, tools and accoutrements, scrapbooking can be a rather pricey hobby.

So how do devoted scrapbookers deal with husbands who might not be so pleased about the cost of their hobby?

Crisp advises making a scrapbook about his favorite hobby or pastime.

"He'll be so honored by what you're doing he doesn't really care how much you spend," she says.

But Corpuz clarifies that compared to other hobbies, scrapbooking is a reasonably priced hobby for middle-class households.

"But it can be very addictive," says Adrian, who has a large portfolio of stickers and collects more stickers than she uses in her books or crafts. "Some are limited editions and could become rare very soon."

Crisp adds coyly, "That's when you scan them and sell 'em on eBay."

Keepsakes is located at 2259 Lincoln Ave. For more information on classes or Girls Night Out, call 408.269.6609, or visit www.ourkeepsakes.com.