By Jill Diver
DERRY — Gloria Armstrong, of Derry, spends one Friday night and one Saturday a month offering scrapbooking workshops at Calvary Christian Church.
Ten years ago, scrapbooking was a rarity in New England, and Armstrong would gently persuade friends and family to come along and just try it.
"I had to say, 'please come and try it,'" she said. "We used to make a page in the class. There were people who would say 'I'll just watch; I could never do this.'"
"Some people just had trouble cutting their photos, but once they did, and they made their first page, it was one of my favorite things," said Armstrong. "Then they were hooked."
Armstrong has been scrapbooking for 10 years. She started when she received a letter from a Creative Memories scrapbooking consultant in Maryland, who told her someone had given Creative Memories her name.
Since then, she has been hosting scrapbooking workshops and selling the Creative Memories' products.
In all, she has made about 10 albums for herself. Once Armstrong had her first child, she realized that scrapbooking was far better than having baby books. Scrapbooking isn't just cutting photos and gluing them to the page; it's also about the words that go on the page.
"Sometimes the words in the scrapbook are more important than the pictures," she said. "To write down how much you love your child allows your child to have the words that explain how you as parents feel about them, and sometimes parents don't take the time to tell their kids how they feel."
As Armstrong talked, she brought out one of her own photo albums. One of the pages she displayed was her son getting to meet Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon. Armstrong displayed the layout and the simple lines of the page.
"Scrapbooking isn't about being fancy, and anyone who wants to try should give it a shot," she said. "You write your story, and to have that story is absolutely beautiful."
To have a story on a page is only one part of scrapbooking; the other parts are about the friendships and, for some, the healing it brings.
"I had a lady come to me at Derryfest," recalled Armstrong."Her son had died and she had been trying to figure out what to do with the photos she had of him. She said that she needs to do this."
"I think it's very healing to scrapbook," she said. "It's kind of a therapy. You're doing something that's purposeful, and you can take it home and show your family."
Penny Burpeau, of Londonderry, attends Armstrong's workshops. She has been scrapbooking for eight years and has the luggage bag to prove it.
Burpeau's luggage bag is, in fact, a rolling bag filled with her scrapbooking supplies.
"I take all these pictures and they don't do any good in these photo sleeves," she said, while shuffling through piles of photos in their sleeves.
While scrapbooking can be a testament of love for your children, it is also a creative way to record memories. If you are not convinced that your memories should be preserved creatively, the "rocking chair test" is one way to find out.
"The rocking chair test is when you look at stack of pictures when you're old and gray and ask, are you going to remember?" said Burpeau.
If you don't think you're going to remember funny things your children, friends or family said, then you should scrapbook your photos.
And scrapbooking isn't just something for the ladies.
Men enjoy it as well. Burpeau says she crops the pictures and sets up the pages, and her husband journals.
Some men do the actual scrapbooking.
Jim Powers also attends workshops and is newer to scrapbooking.
"I come for the supplies," he said. "There's not many men who scrapbook, but mostly I scrapbook my travels."
Powers is working on his fourth scrapbook.
"I can go stretches, and I keep working until I run out of supplies or I'm tired," he said.
For information on local scrapbooking workshops visit www.mycmsite.com/sites/armstrong.
