Jan Kiernan scrapbook-maker
I always made birthday or Christmas cards, and then last year my dad had a big birthday and I wanted to do a scrapbook. It's a bit like making a photo album, but you can use things like newspaper cuttings, patterned paper, fancy embellishments and some writing about the event or photograph.
The length is up to yourself. For presents I might do a 10-page scrapbook. This one was 20 pages. There were photographs of us as children, some of them taken on holidays. There were photographs from my dad's childhood of him playing football when he was a boy.
I added journal entries to some of the photographs, so it meant I asked my gran about my dad as a child. She told me about the day he was born. He's not blond, but he was blond as a baby, and one of the things she told me was that when he was born they talked about how a white-headed boy came on a white day. He was born in February, and there had been the first snow of the year that day. When you create something you're doing it yourself. If you're doing something to give to someone else, it's just that little bit more personal.
I have a lot more than a boxworth of stuff I keep for cards and scrapbooks. Recently I made the invitations for my brother's wedding. I did them in batches; I think there were around 100 in all. I teach senior infants, and sometimes I bring in some of the materials to the classroom. They love using the stamps.
A lot of the women who get to know each other through internet crafting chat rooms meet up, so there's a bit of a social aspect to it. There are plenty of online forums, with people sharing ideas.
With digital cameras you have loads of photographs on the computer, but every now and again I clear them off onto discs. When I like one set of pictures, such as a recent skiing holiday, I'll have a full set printed.
I do see myself as an old woman some day, looking back through my scrapbooks, but also you would like to pass it on and hope if you had children that they could look at it. If it's presented nicely, then they might see things that mattered to me and understand why.