The Household COO

The first time I saw a scrapbooking shop was when I was at The Curve.  The shop was called Papier and I remembered thinking it was never going to survive. 

A couple of years later, scrapbooking seems to be a rather hot hobby (although, based on my experience I can’t say it’s going to be my new hobby) and scrapbooking shops seem to be popping up all over the place.  I guess there are enough people interested in this hobby to keep the trade alive.

In case you’re wondering about my little scrapbook project, well, it’s still going albeit rather slowly.  I guess I just don’t really have the patience for this hobby.  I’m already taking all the shortcuts I can possibly think of and already I’m struggling to finish it.  I guess I should consider a new hobby, eh?

Anyway, here are the few scrapbooking shops I’ve become aware of:

Papier
Lot 161, 1st Floor, The Curve,
Mutiara Damansara, Malaysia
03-7725 4815

Scrapping Ville
Lot S131, 2nd Floor, East Wing, Bangsar Shopping Complex
283 Jalan Maarof,
59000 Kuala Lumpur

ScrappingGlitz
AU21, Prima Court
Jalan Ukay Prima
Saujana Melawati
53100 Kuala Lumpur
0126081898

I only found out about ScrappingGlitz through an online search.  Never actually been in the shop myself.

Howwwhy
Level 1, Bangsar Village I
2, Jalan Telawi 1,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur
03-22881200

Howwwhy isn’t completely devoted to scrapbooking (they also sell craft books and Dooodolls) but they do have quite a consistent range of scrapbooking materials.

Craft Haven
Lot S211 (2nd Floor),
1 Utama Shopping Centre,
1 Lebuh Bandar Utama,
47800 Petaling Jaya
03-77273541

Craft Haven is an art and craft supply shop but I’ve noticed recently that they have started selling scrapbooking materials.  While it isn’t a huge range, their stickers are really cute.

Art Friend
T-213, Level 3, The Gardens Mall
Mid Valley City
Lingkaran Syed Putra,
59200 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
03-22847777

Art Friend is also an art and craft supply shop with a much more extensive art and craft supply compared to Craft Haven.  They have some scrapbooking materials but the range is very limited.

You can also get your scrapbooking materials online from Scrap-n-Crop.

Well, I’ll be…  Hubby’s photograph taken from our Great Ocean Road tour was shortlisted by Schmap to be included in the 5th edition of their Melbourne Guide which will be published at the end of this month.  It’s a free guide so there’s no payment for the photo, but the publicity would be good if he was moonlighting as a photographer…

They found the photo from my Flickr stream and dropped me a message.  Here’s the photo that was selected:

Stay tuned to see if it made the final cut…

Well, okay, so it’s been in for a while now.

I have to admit, when I first saw the shop Papier in The Curve, I didn’t think this hobby would survive here -especially not when it cost so much just to get the materials. Imagine my surprise when I noticed more scrapbooking shops popping up all over the place, while shops that didn’t normally offer scrapbooking products started supplying them. I guess the whole scrapbooking thing has really taken off…

This is the first scrapbook I ever made after our honeymoon as a gift for some friends in Japan:

Somewhere around the middle of the album, I was starting to lose my enthusiasm for scrapbooking. By the time I got to the end of the album, I pretty much got over the need to express myself artistically.

Recently, after much nagging, I finally developed more photos of Gavin and decided to make another scrapbook of Gavin’s baby photos. I ended up developing so many photos that I had enough photos for three large albums.

Since I had so many photos, I adopted a rather minimalistic approach to decorating my pages. Firstly, I crammed too many photos onto one page.

Secondly, I used very little decorations for each page.

Forgive me for sounding cheap and miserly when we’re talking about happy memories, but when you consider that these sticker letterings cost me RM15,

and these stickers cost anywhere from RM15-25, and add the fact that I have 180 pages to decorate, it is starting to get a little out of hand, don’t you think?

The up side of taking the minimalistic approach was that I completed one album a lot more quickly than it took me to finish the album I made after our honeymoon.

Only in Malaysia does a hobby like this cost so much. I remember being able to buy art and craft supplies from Spotlight in Melbourne for such reasonable prices that it didn’t seem so outrageous to keep such hobbies.

That said, there is a trick to scrapbooking in Malaysia at a more affordable price. Instead of using the stickers and all those fancy supplies, you can buy the decorative cards that they have available for the backdrop and cut out the pictures for decorations. Instead of costing some RM15-25 for 10 to 20 stickers, you can get a whole lot more pictures for RM5-15.

If you really want to go cheaper, just use some cutesy wrapping paper which will give you a heck of a lot more pictures for RM1.50-2.00. I don’t think you can get cheaper than that.

Now I can go back and add some more colour to the first album I made…

That said, though, I have to admit my efforts at scrapbooking are rather lame when you compare them to stuff like this.

With the advent of digital cameras and photos, it was inevitable that the creative ways in which photos can be used extend themselves to memorabilia like mugs, bags, calendars, cards and just about any other gift item you can think of.  It is therefore not so unthinkable that the next application would be to place your photos on your pillow cases such as the photo pillows from Vision Bedding.

If mugs, bags, and calendars seem too “yesterday” for your style and you would like something a little more unique for a gift, I can’t think of anything more appropriate than creating a photo pillow.