For Marianne Thiesen, it was as simple as working on a family tree to get her addicted to scrapbooking.

“I wanted to do something different with that, so I started scrapbooking and now I’m completely addicted,” Thiesen laughed.

Thiesen has recently taken over Scrapper’s Cove (formerly Scrappy Do’s) in downtown Invermere, and said she’s excited to offer her specialized supplies to scrapbookers young and old.  Thiesen carries a wide range of supplies, from special acid and chemical-free paper  to all the embellishments, from paints and chalks to stickers and inkpads.

“It’s a very artistic kind of (activity), people use pens and paints to make their pages nice and fancy, and there’s tons of things you can do with it,” Thiesen said. “But once you start scrapbooking, you can’t stop.”

While it is possible to get very artistic with scrapbooking, Thiesen said that you don’t have to be artistically inclined to have fun with it. Scrapbooking can also be a fantastic activity for kids, as they can express themselves through their creativity and choice of colours, photos and pages. Mother’s Day cards and Christmas cards were just two of the examples Thiesen gave for kids activities, and there are countless more to choose from.

“You don’t have to be artistic, I like to do squiggles and all sorts of things, and some people have to have everything square, and that works for them,” Thiesen said. “It’s really nice for kids because they can keep those memories.”

Now having scrapbooked for  over five years, Thiesen said she’s accumulated quite a collection of her own. Starting with her research of her family tree, Thiesen now has a 90-page scrapbook resplendant with timeless black and white photographs, memories and journal entries. That book in particular took her some three months to complete, and currently she’s in the process of working on two others, one detailing all the trips she’s taken in her life and another for her grandson.

“It’s the creativity of it,” Thiesen explained. “Each new page is different with different colours, and just putting a story to the pictures — there’s a lot of journaling too.”

For Thiesen, each book begins with a general plan of what she wants it to look like before she begins to gather materials and content. Pictures usually play a central role with text to support them, but it really depends on the person. Thiesen also sells scrapbooking kits that come pre-designed that she says are perfect for beginners. For anyone else who is interested in what scrapbooking is all about, Thiesen also usually brings her personal scrapbooks to work with her and is happy to show them off.

“I think that when people see an album that’s all made up already and just the story that it tells, they realize how precious those books can be, especially to be handed down to someone else,” Thiesen said. “That’s part of the whole scrapbooking thing, being able to show them to

people.”