In 1956 I was in college at Michigan's Hillsdale College and wanted to send a cute card to a fellow I was casually dating.  Not finding anything I liked at the stores, I bought some blank cards and made one with water colors and calligraphy pens. 

My sorority sisters and dorm mates saw the custom-made card and began asking for them to send to THEIR boyfriends.  I started making money @ $.75 apiece. 

After one particularily memorable dance I made a scrapbook page for a book my father had bought for me.  That first page had a photo, a drawing of the dance gift, and a few decorations, all done in India ink and water colors, adhered with rubber cement.  The page was Manila paper and turned brown in no time, but my hobby was off and running. 

By the end of 2 years there were a couple of dozen scrapbook pages in the scrapbook.  Unfortunately, in 1966, after moving to our first house with my, then, husband, there was a flood in the basement and that book along with all of my photos and negatives were destroyed. 

By the time my children were growing I started the hobby again with their photos, manila paper, again, with decorations cut from greeting cards and wallpaper sample books.  To be sure there would not be a repeat of the prior disaster, I laminated those pages with the school laminator.  Again, those photos were destroyed by the very process I used trying to save them.  In some cases the rubber cement had not dried and the laminating process ate right through the photos.

I gave up until...1995...I was stuck at home after knee surgery in February with no enthusiasm for anything.  Not even the computer crafters group, PALS, i had been active in.  Then I saw an add in a Michaels Crafts circular for scrapbooking supplies with a demonstration.  I called a friend and she and my daughter helped me go through the store with a cart gathering supplies.  The demonstration was a young girl scrapping her prom photos.  My companions both said, "You could do better" to me.

Again I was off and running.  By the time I retired from teaching and packed for my first winter in Florida in 2003, the back of the new Ford F150 was filled with my scrapbook supplies.  I took over the dining room that first year and a guest bedroom the second year.  Just after finishing my 35th album (including gifts), I discovered Digital Scrapbooking.  WOW!  Two loves of mine, computers and scrapping, combined into one fantastic hobby.  I never looked back, and, although still immensely proud of my paper scrapbooks, I have gone completely digital.