Scrapping


1870's scrap albums, originally uploaded by ivoryblushroses.

Scrapbooking is something I've enjoyed off and on for a long time. One of my favorite Friday evening activities is attending Midnight Madness scrapbooking at our local scrapbooking store with my sister. I was first inspired by my first college roommate, Nancy who did fabulous ones decades before it was the "in" thing to do. Mine fell far short of her artistic efforts, but I plugged away at it. I did my fair share of doing things like gluing baby cards in baby books and kept a box of memorabilia that was intended for putting in a scrapbook someday, but I never achieved the heights that Nancy did. Now, I mostly play with it. I make cards and journal pages, but I don't really make scrapbooks of family photos. Maybe it is because I can't keep these old lovely scrapbooks out of my mind!

After our house fire, when I was perusing antique shops for things for our new home, I found these two lovely scrap albums in different shops and had to bring them home. Both are filled with calling cards and bits of ephemera. The brown one is artistically done, with pages laid out with coordinating scraps and pictures. The Green one has mostly calling cards just glued in to fill each page and a few pages with a mix of pictures. Every now and then I take them out to browse through them. What a fun glimpse of history they are! Both of them contain ephemera with dates of 1879 in them.

Today, many people would tear these apart and use the scraps in today's scrapbooking type crafts. I find I can't bear to dissemble them as I really love the glimpse into the past they offer.

Allow me to share a few of my favorite pages out of them with you!


Harebells and Ferns

I love bell shaped flowers and ferns and this page has lots of both!

Too Late

The penmanship in this is so beautiful and the sentiment written here is one we need to hear today. I wonder who wrote this? Did a child ask her mother to write if for her or did the creator of the album write it? Or was it something someone wrote after feeling badly about how they treated the album's owner?

--Too Late --
If I had known in the morning
How wearily all the day
The words unkind would trouble my mind,
I said when you went away,
I had been more careful, darling,
Nor given you needless pain;
But we vex "our own"
With look and tone.
We might never take back again.
--- ** ---
We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But for "our own"
The bitter tone
Though we love our own the best.
Ah! lips with the curve impatient'
Ah! brow with the look of scorn;
'Twere a cruel fate
Were the night too late
To undo the work of morn.
-- ** --
Wm Nelson, May 1879

Calling cards

Do you remember reading about name cards in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, "Little Town On the Prairie"?

"In the newspaper office Mr Hopp in his ink-spotted apron spread the sample
cards on the counter for them to see. Each card was more beautiful than the
last. [ ] They were every pale, lovely color, some even had gilt edges. There was
choice of six different bouquets, and one had a bird's nest nestled among the
flowers, two birds on its rim, and above them the word Love.
"That's a young man's card." Mr Hopp told them. "Only a young fellow's brash enough to hand out a card with 'Love' on it."

Times have changed haven't they? I can't imagine one of my boys handing out a name card with the word 'Love' on it much less thinking it showed how brash they were!


Lovely Ephemera

Don't you just love the postcard with the girls in uniform on it?! I wonder, are they students in school uniform, nurses in training or even maids or novice nuns?

scraps 02

What a lovely trio of ladies on this page! Such innocence and purity in the one on the left. And look at that glorious head of hair on the bottom one. What an extravagance of lace and ruffles on the one on the right!

Blessing scrap

I think this one, framed in silver Dresden, embossed paper and velvet ribbon, looks like something that many of our modern day crafters would create! What a lovely blessing to leave you with as well!


A Blessing

May your progress in life's busy road,
Bring blessings in daily increase,
At its close, may Happiness in fullness abound,
With Harmony, Gladness and Peace.

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