Scrap mania

MARTHA STEWART is a woman with many hobbies. She cooks, gardens and makes jam. And now it seems she has decided to take up scrapbooking. This month Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia launched a line of Martha-branded supplies, bringing a dash of glamour to the world of paper crafts.

A scrapbook is essentially a photograph album with decorations. The photographs are in some cases merely a pretext for a collage about a wedding or a barbecue. Ribbons, stickers and stamps are the basic kit in the scrapper's arsenal. Scrappers can also buy embellishments to suit any occasion, from a miniature Marine uniform to a hole-punch that makes tiny paper butterflies.

Never mind recycling—authentic scraps are seldom used. Booming sales of decorations and other scrapbooking supplies added up to $2.6 billion in 2006. The Craft and Hobby Association says it is the most popular craft in America: 12% of American households have a scrapper on premises. (Scrappers are almost all women, though some outfits are gunning for men with such things as NASCAR-themed embellishments.) Target and other big-box retailers now devote whole aisles to scrapbooking supplies, and craft-supply chains such as Michaels, based in Irving, Texas, are expanding their product ranges.

But although scrapbooking may be popular, it has never been fashionable. The prevailing aesthetic is saccharine. It includes glitter, polka dots and lots of pink. Martha Stewart Crafts brings a slightly more sophisticated style to scrapbooking, with albums in tasteful shades such as walnut and persimmon. The line is not entirely humourless, with stickers of a hula-hooping watermelon and a happy orange waving a pennant.

Perhaps Ms Stewart's arrival on the scene will earn scrapbooking a little more respect. Other crafts, after all, are taken seriously. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York featured an exhibit of quilts a few years ago. Knitters click away on the subway. Sublime Stitching, based in Austin, Texas, sells embroidery patterns featuring pirates and pieces of sushi. True, a preoccupation with the relative merits of various types of decorative sticky tape is not for everyone. But a well made scrapbook is more impressive than yet another of those itchy scarves.