Is scrapbooking dead ?

I've heard the buzz recently on blogs, that scrapbooking is dead.  here


For me it certainly has been dormant for a while. To begin with I had thought it was because of the pain from a spine problem I had for a couple of years. It meant I couldn't sit without pain, so scrapbooking had to stop. But when I think about it, I used to scrap standing up most of the time when I was at home. I also stopped just at the time I finally had the bespoke scrapbook/ study of my dreams.

Then I thought, maybe it was because I had come to realise that no one in my family gave a shit about the pretty 12 x 12 pictures I was regularly putting into albums, that nobody ever looked at.
 But I'm starting to think I have just evolved. It started with the very thing that got me into scrapbooking- photographs. I started to be envious of the amazing captures on the blogs I was visiting more and more. I wanted to be able to take better photographs. So I took a workshop with Karen Russell back in 2010 and then again in 2012.That was it, my life changed.
I spent months doing assignments, reading about photography, experimenting and learning. This then lead me to take a different approach to my scrapbooking. I bought a Project Life kit from Becky Higgins and that changed the way I recorded memories for 2011. It was all about the daily photos and journalling.

It took up so much time and effort, that I didn't really have the extra time for making layouts. It seems to be true of other scrappers I know, that Project Life was the death of their classic 12 x 12 layouts. How weird that the very person asked to talk about the Death of scrapbooking might be the very peron that helped cause it. Now it would seem all the "famous" celebrity scrappers seem to be involved with Project Life somehow. So more and more people are using this as a way to document their lives.

I also found the simplicity of making beautiful, yearly photobooks, didn't help. I used all my favourite and best photos from each year in one massive book. They sit out on the coffee table, where my most recent scrap album used to sit. I had always had a sneaky suspicion that my children would just throw away my scrp albums when I am gone. There are too many for them to find a home for.  But I knew they would be more likely to hang on to the photobooks for future generations.

The Worldwide recession seemed to hit , just at the time my back problems did. So slowly, the scrapbook stores that i loved here became more expensive, and then shut one by one. I am lucky, in that I have a store here in my small market town. But it tends to not get my creative juices flowing. I have never been an Internet shopper, I always had to see and buy in person. So slowly that way of getting me excited creatively, died. The cost of petrol went through the roof and the old days of travelling hours to a scrap store stopped.

I think the rot started to set in when Creative Keepsakes magazine stated to have problems. My much anticipated magazine, didn't always turn up and one by one they got rid of all the great scrappers writing for their magazine. Which of course ended up in them all going on line and starting things up like Project Life !

Scrapbooking is something I still love and I would dearly love to get back into it as much as I used to. I still attend crops regularly, so that I keep my brain tuned to be creative. I have a small pile of scrapbook projects on the go at the moment. My India mini book is nearing completion and I have a fab mini book kit from Ann Freemans Enfield Christmas crop I've just attended.

Are you still scrapbooking ? How do you keep yourself motivated, when all around you no one gives a damn !