Welcome back to another addition of Beer, Bikes and Babes. This section of my scrapbooking blog is dedicated to the male gender. One which is often overlooked when it comes to scrapbooking and scrapbooking supplies. Although, there is little out there to help encourage men to take a leap into the scrap'n world, there is a desire. So I found after just a bit of research.
I'm peppering the blog with some masculine pages.
I did a typical Google search of men and scrapbooking and although I didn't come up with much, there was plenty of evidence out there that men were indeed interested in this hobby. I was reading through dozens of comments on scrapbookingpaper.net from guys in the 1%. There were many comments from men about their reasonable complaints as well as their uncomfortable/awkward feelings to actually visit a store or attend workshops. I can totally understand why they might feel this way, but I felt compelled to leave a comment myself. It went something like this: "I think it's great to see men in a scrap shop and in workshops, too. Not only does it show these guys are not afraid of what others will think because indeed, many people jump to the often wrong conclusion that these crafty men are gay, but it helps make the hobby more inclusive and well rounded." Kind of like your first year in Uni. Guys often have a different way of laying out their projects which helps the chickies in the lesson to think out side of the box. A little dose of testosterone never seemed to ruin any scrapping environment I was in. I also told them, "What better way to pick up chicks?" Hehehe...
Just under half of the friends I asked to take the eight question survey that required a Y or N with a completion time of approximately 1 minute, filled out the survey. Out of the eighteen men, all but two said they enjoyed taking photos and all but one said they enjoyed looking at photos. That's a great start! All male surveyors ticked "Yes" to the question, "Do you enjoy spending time on the computer?" Another plus for the male scrapping world. When asked if they were familiar with photo editing software, all but two ticked "Y". Yes! Another plus! An overwhelming majority of the guys acknowledged that they had seen either traditional scrapbooks or digital scrapbooks. Now, for the topper. Eight of the surveyors said they would consider composing a digital scrapbook (One said he already had.) That is just under half of the men surveyed. That is awesome! The final question was also a bit of a surprise conclusion and that is, five guys out of the eighteen surveyed, said they would even consider making a traditional style scrapbook! Yea-haw!!! Now, my math skills are absolute crap, but this seems like more than 1% to me.
I did find quite a few scrapbooking supplies that I thought would be suitable for the macho scrappers out there. There was a Not For Girls CD Rom at polkadoodles.co.uk and scrappinstuff.com had one of the THE best selections I found for over all scrapbooking supplies in total dude categories. I mean really good. The Industrial strength Collection I came across was so cool. I found it at store.scrapgirls.com.
If you want a giggle take a look at cracked.com/manbooking. It is just perfect! A guy's view on scrapbooking. So funny!
According to the research that I did, scrapbooking is something men not only know about, but a hobby or pass time that they might just endeavor. I hope to encourage men that are sitting on the fence. I suppose jumping into the the female dominated world of scrapbooking would be like wearing pink or sipping on a Cosmopolitan for a guy. Stereotypes should never hold us back. Now, get off the fence and scrap your butt off!
Use templates to make scrapbooking fast, simple and beautiful.
That's a sweet bundle of soccer goodies to scrapbook your pages.
Keep it simple with a large title.
Give digital or traditional scrapbooking a try, today!
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