Paper view

Photographs and memories: Papercrafters’ stock is rising

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo j. Adam Fenster⁄The Gazette Say it withfibers: Michele Zaiderman’shandmade cardsand scrapbooks. Click here to enlarge this photo Photos Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette Paper crafter Nikki Eyman puts the finishing touches on handmade cards (below) in the craft classroom at Michael’s, where she teaches. Eyman (above) also serves as an independent consultant for Memory Works.

‘‘People are very intimidated by the big blank page,” says the Gaithersburg mom, a former elementary school teacher whose Beginning Scrapbooking class was held at Michael’s Craft Warehouse in the Kentlands. ‘‘They don’t know what to do. But you choose your photos, you choose your color theme. It doesn’t have to be chronological; it can be done through events, like Halloween.”

It’s simple, she says, to transform basement boxes of photos into beautifully embellished scrapbooks, and to create personalized holiday cards, invitations and thank you notes — regardless of how much talent you may or may not have.

‘‘I’m not artistic,” Zaiderman says, although the beautifully creative cards in her portfolio suggest otherwise. ‘‘I can’t draw. And I used to be the Queen of Hallmark. I had the Hallmark gold card.”

Over the past decade, though, card making in her basement has replaced those trips to the strip mall card shop. And the sense of accomplishment that comes from creating a card is second only to the gratitude she gets from recipients.

‘‘People praise you for it,” says Zaiderman. ‘‘They say, ‘Wow, this is beautiful!’ so you feel like you get something back.”

She says that people look forward to seeing what she’ll come up with next — the holiday cards, the birthday invitations for 3-year-old Jake, even the birth announcements for the new baby she and her husband are expecting in a few weeks.

Zaiderman has been doing papercrafts — scrapbooking and cardmaking – for 10 years now, and she can put students at ease because she remembers her own creative evolution.

‘‘I actually took a class with the county,” she remembers. ‘‘It was very rudimentary at the time: a lot of stickers and markers, cutting shapes.

‘‘It’s really come a long way.”

Connections and creativity

Judi Kauffman couldn’t agree more.

‘‘It’s such a huge part of the craft industry right now!” she exclaims. ‘‘It’s an activity that spans every possible ability and every age range; it’s not limited to men or women.”

Kauffman, whose Book ‘‘By the Batch: Creative Cards, Postcards, Envelopes & More” came out last summer, lives in Chevy Chase where her papercraft area is ‘‘a magnet in my basement” for the neighborhood boys and girls. She says that ‘‘on a daily basis, I’m talking to hundreds of people on the Internet” about card making.

‘‘It’s about connections and creativity,” Kauffman says.

She herself got started when her best friend, fellow artist Jo Rango, moved to New Mexico.

‘‘We decided to keep in touch with something tangible,” Kauffman explains. ‘‘It got us over the hurdle of grief.” It eventually got them side by side entries in a ‘‘mail art exhibit” — and created a storm of card giving in their social circle. When Kauffman was turning 60, a friend sent a handmade card every day for two months before the milestone event. And a basket of handmade cards, the artist has found, makes a unique and treasured gift. She makes hers ‘‘by the batch,” as she likes to say.

‘‘In the world of ephemera, of e-mail that disappears, you can put yourself in people’s hands with cards.”

‘‘I’ve never sent a card,” she adds, ‘‘when the recipient didn’t say to me later ‘I was having such a bad day, and then I got your card!’”

Go into a craft store that’s having a sale on card stock, she suggests, and buy a sheet.

‘‘Fold it in half and you have two cards for 10 cents,” she points out. ‘‘It’s much easier than people think, much faster than people think and much cheaper than people think.”

Getting Started Most craft stores offer classes in papercrafts: scrapbooking and card making. Check the Yellow Pages for a craft store near you. Many papercrafters ‘‘get together” on the Internet. Use a search engine to get information on crafters in your area. Books and magazines have a lot of papercraft tips and ideas. Visit your local branch of the Montgomery County Public Library (or log on to www.mcpl.org) to find the library nearest you.

Embellishments

Nikki Eyman is a papercrafter who teaches both card making and basic scrapbooking. The Germantown resident works at Michael’s and is a custom scrapbook designer and Independent Memory Works consultant. Her career has many benefits: the flexibility she needs as a new mom, the creative outlet she craves and the chance to help others feel the warmth that comes with putting memories and milestones on display. A child of divorce, she was determined to preserve family memories for her husband, her son and herself.

‘‘When I first got started, I just bought stuff I loved,” says Eyman, leading a tour up and down the papercraft aisles at Michael’s. ‘‘I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t have a space to work in. I got frustrated.

‘‘I had a box full of stuff and I just had to put it away for a while.”

It’s easy to see how that happens. The aisles hold rack after rack of paper in a variety of weights and a rainbow of colors. There are ribbons and stickers and stencils here, ‘‘embellishments” that run the gamut from flowers and rhinestones and pink and blue booties to tiny wedding gowns and little football uniforms. Eyman says that organization is key.

‘‘That’s what I tell people when they came to scrapbooking basics class,” she says. ‘‘‘Look at your photos — the colors, the themes.’”

Black and white photos look good with monochromatic hues; seasonal photos — like Halloween pictures with autumn leaves in the background — tend to go hand in hand with the colors we traditionally associate with them. The color⁄theme unity that pulls together scrapbooks works with cardmaking, too, and Eyman says that kits can make it quick and easy to get started in either medium.

‘‘With card making, you can make the perfect gift for a person,” she says. ‘‘It’s a creative outlet, plus if someone likes the card, it makes you feel good.

‘‘With scrapbooking, though, you’re adding your photos and documenting for future generations.”

Family ties

Like Eyman, Diane Bernard of Gaithersburg is a professional scrapbooker whose childhood memories went undocumented.

‘‘My mom died early,” says Bernard. ‘‘One of the biggest parts of scrapbooking is journaling. I like to journal, to explain who was there, what they were doing and feeling.

‘‘My kids love to look at my scrapbook.”

Years ago, she says, her aunt gave her a scrapbooking kit as a baby shower gift.

‘‘At first I was overwhelmed by everything,” says Bernard. ‘‘I started small.”

By the time she met her business partner Valerie Crosby in the hallway of the Epworth preschool, both were ready to start going to ‘‘crops” — scrapbooking get-togethers.

‘‘We went to one outside Baltimore,” says Bernard, ‘‘and we said, ‘Boy, we’d do so many things differently.’”

So they held their own crop, and in four years, Creative Crops, the company the two friends formed, has acquired 118 members.

‘‘We bring together people who want to do scrapbooking,” says Bernard. ‘‘You bring your own materials: pictures, paper, basic supplies. We have vendors there — Creative Memories, Stampin’ Up — so if you’re there and you’re short on supplies, you never have to leave.

‘‘All our vendors are required to do a ‘‘make and take,” and we encourage them to teach something new.”

Like taking a class, attending a crop offers access to new ideas, unique stamps and specialty machinery like die cuts and heat transfers. Bernard says a lot of crafters come to a crop to celebrate birthdays and Girls Weekends.

Their next event, on Nov. 18 in Rockville, is a 12-hour crop ($60 admission includes lunch, dinner and snacks), but there are weekend events as well.

‘‘We open the doors at 3 o’clock on Friday and people literally scrapbook ’round the clock until Sunday at 4,” says Bernard.

‘‘They scrapbook in pajamas, play games,” she adds. ‘‘It’s a lot of fun.”