Nurses prepare scrapbook for future?s sake

Scrapbooking is an age-old art that dates back to the 15th century. In the 20th century, scrapbooking consisted of pasting photographs to an ornamented piece of paper. Modern computers have dramatically altered the way the craft is practiced, shifting the workshop from desktop to disc.  

No matter the century, the purpose of scrapbooks has remained unchanged: to preserve the past for future generations. To that end the Washington County Hospital and Clinics has embarked on a quest for biographies of its nurses. The hospital will collect the information in a single book ? a scrapbook, that is. It will contain photographs of the nurses, their credentials, their backgrounds and perhaps even some of their stories.     

Surgery supervisor Linda Six said, ?We?re planning to have each of the nurses do a scrapbook page to tell a little bit about themselves. We want to read about their family or anything they want to share. Some people are timid about putting too much about their family life but they will talk about where they went to school and how long they?ve worked here.?

Six said the book won?t just be for current nurses but for former ones as well. She said something similar to a scrapbook was done a few years ago and it was a great success. Information about the nurses was put in a hallway so the public could view it.

?The patients loved it because they enjoyed learning about their nurses,? said Six.

Chief nursing officer Bonnie Kester purchased stickers such as cats and dogs for the nurses, which they can use to personalize their pages. She said that not all of the nurses will want to include their private life in the scrapbook. However, all of them will share what they like best about their job.

Six said, ?Nurses tend to be bashful about talking about themselves. But we should be very proud because not everyone saves a life at work. We play ourselves down too much, but this will be a week when we can proudly say, ?I?m a nurse.??

Kester added, ?We (nurses) need to get better at sharing because we have some amazing stories to tell.?

Six remarked, ?And a lot of funny stories to tell, too.?

The nurses will work on the scrapbook all this month and have it ready in time for National Nurses Week, which is May 6-12.

LaVerta Butterbaugh has witnessed one change after another to her favorite hobby ? scrapbooking. Butterbaugh runs Grandma?s Corner Shop in Kalona, where she has spent countless hours designing, decorating and gluing together scrapbooks.

Butterbaugh was also a nurse at one time. She said she began scrapbooking as a way to relieve the tension built up from her job.

?The medical field can be pretty hairy,? she said. ?Scrapbooking was my way of being creative.?

Butterbaugh was among the first in her family to scrapbook, and has been doing it for 30 years. She has a sister who is very artistic, but expresses her artistry through quilts instead of scrapbooks. Butterbaugh said she has no idea how her sister makes such beautiful quilts, and her sister says the same about Butterbaugh?s scrapbooks.

Butterbaugh has taught classes on scrapbooking to local civic clubs. She spoke about her hobby at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mt. Pleasant.

?I?ve spoken at a hospice group about creating scrapbooks to work through grief,? she said.

How is a scrapbook different from, say, a photo album? Butterbaugh explained that a scrapbook contains much more than just photos. When she makes scrapbooks for her children, she inserts any kind of thin, memorable material, such as newspaper clippings.

Butterbaugh often includes track medallions or buttons featuring a student?s photograph. She puts in 4-H ribbons. She even put in a swatch of fabric from a girl?s fancy dress.

?Actually, they should be called memory albums instead of scrapbooks,? said Butterbaugh.

In years past, Butterbaugh would make, say, a birthday scrapbook by pasting birthday cards to a plain piece of paper. Over time, the paper deteriorated and turned yellow. The advent of acid-free paper has solved that problem for scrapbookers.

Step one of scrapbooking is to lay out all of your materials on a big desk. At least, that is how Butterbaugh does it.

?You need a big workspace,? said Butterbaugh.

Now that more and more scrapbooking is done on the computer, the need for a large desk or even a desk at all has diminished.  

The next step is to pick out which pictures to use on each page. Butterbaugh said that some scrapbookers include long photo captions or stand-alone notes in their books.

?Some people like to do a lot of journaling. I let my photos speak for themselves,? she said. ?When people bring in pictures, I lay them all out and look at them two or three times until I can see what I want to do. Once the idea is in my mind, it doesn?t take me long to make the page.?

Butterbaugh once compiled a scrapbook for a boy who played baseball. She laid out 15 pictures of him pitching, each one showing a different stage of his windup. ?I didn?t even add anything to it,? she said.

After the photos have been chosen, it?s time to dress them up with colored paper, stickers and other embellishments.

Butterbaugh?s work as a nurse and her active family life prevented her from devoting much time to scrapbooks at a young age.

?When you get older, you have more time for that sort of thing,? said Butterbaugh, who has dedicated that time to her four children and nine grandchildren. ?That?s when you realize the significance of the pictures.?

Butterbaugh admits she?s not into scrapbooking on the computer.

?You can put your digital pictures in a computer program, and put a quote you want on it,? she said. ?A lot of young people are doing digital scrapbooking.?

The most fun part of putting together a scrapbook is the look on the recipient?s face when the book is opened.

?Seeing their reactions is the best part,? said Butterbaugh. ?They come in and say, ?I never thought to do it that way.??