Framing A Life
A Story About Crafting Scissors
We are all different; we did not fit in with the everyday household scissors, cutting open plastic and packages. We simply waited on the store shelf for the right, right-handed person to unleash our creative abilities. Eventually, a man came along in the craft store and plucked us from the shelf, all of us.
On Mother’s Day, we were finally revealed to the glowing face of a young woman, as a gift. She was a new mother, celebrating her first Mother’s Day – she was our gift, too. Her eyes grew large and round with possibility, taking in our colours and the varied style of our shears for every artistic purpose and occasion.
Our first project – a scrapbook baby album. Sometimes, she would choose whimsical and flowery shears to frame her cherub’s face; antique borders to outline smiling family photos. She used rounded edges or stark, jagged cuts to clip out the poetic sentiments she had written to caption album pages and memorable events, pasted carefully among the cute stickers and speech bubbles. She revelled in creating collages, piecing together the photos of her baby, the three of them, gatherings of loved ones who encircled this colossal event in her life. Each of the scissors had a personality, paired perfectly with the chosen photos and decorative scrapbook page inserts. She had always wanted to create a scrapbook, a keepsake; imagining the treasure her efforts would become for her son and, perhaps, his own family. The beginning of her baby boy’s journey was the perfect time to start.
As the years went by, she had completed two scrapbook baby albums for her first born. Her second pregnancy was ill-fated, a miscarriage only 16 weeks in. Again, she turned to her scissors and, with tears, gingerly cut out the printed emails of condolences from friends and family. A darker little keepsake album was made, but one that also brought remembrance and a glimmer of hope.
Soon, another baby boy emerged in the womb, a fighter. He inspired more poems, more stories, and made her believe in the power of both their strength. She pasted his small body, his first ultrasound photo into a book. As she reached for her trusty craft scissors again, more memories were created on colourful, playful pages. The books expanded with page inserts, photos, gushing and sentimentality.
As the days and weeks turned into months and years, the concentrated time and energy needed to take care of all the motherly duties have rendered these scissors dormant for a while, but they are not forgotten. The pictures are kept safe, waiting, and the stolen moments needed to get lost in a craft are peeking around the corners. Her boys are growing older, taller; they are full of questions and stories – they now look through her childhood albums and find joy looking at the pages of their own scrapbook baby albums. Sometimes, they tell her about how they remember certain events when the pictures were taken; there are stories rekindled that exist beyond the framed borders of the pictures, carefully stowed away in all their hearts, and only a thought away; memories kept in the scrapbook pages, safe and treasured.
Now, their may be a new project for us to explore… cutting pictures out of old Xmas cards to make new ones; homemade and heartfelt. The journey continues.
As for the scrapbooks, all the possibility, the memories, began with a man rescuing us in a craft store while searching for the perfect gift to give his wife on her first Mother’s Day; he knew her artistic heart, her need for art and what she would create.
About the Creator
Andrea Raine
Andrea McKenzie Raine was born in Smithers, BC and grew up in Victoria, BC where she still resides. She lives with her husband and two young sons and, by day, is employed as a correspondence writer for the provincial government.
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