It's the Weekend in Paradise

My front porch has to be one of my very favorite places in this house of ours. I'll miss having coffee out here with the overhead fan going and some light jazz playing on the radio. I love the fountain and the fact that people wave and say hello when they walk by. We added this front porch to the house design when we had this house built. There is just something about a front porch!
Our new house is going to have a front porch too. It sits in front of my new workroom, so while I am playing with adhesives, papers and other assorted scrappers' delights, I can look out upon our new neighborhood. The new porch is neither screened nor bannistered but I hope to do that eventually.



I had an interesting conversation with a couple gals who work knee deep in the scrapbooking industry about what drives the industry itself and how this is so different from most consumer based ones. The easiest comparison is the car industry. If consumers buy more of the big SUVs, the industry bows to the demand and produces more of those; if red cars aren't selling, the car manufacturers come up with the colors that do sell more cars. And, despite the ads for new cars by a few celebs, a very few people buy a certain car 'cause someone famous says it is good.
In the scrapbooking world, the trends are generated out of the industry itself and the manufacturing companies. They hold Design Team searches and we buy tons of the new product and try out by the hundreds (and I've done this too), they hold Best Scrapper of the Universe and Best Album contests and we buy the product and enter. Sometimes we don't even like the stuff but what the industry generates, we buy. The consumer in the scrapbook industry does NOT drive the industry, the companies and their celebs do. Point in case, there are thousands and thousands of "baby boomers" out there with enormous amounts of buying power yet, to date, there has not been one single magazine, not one single "celeb" and not one single idea book that is aimed at this group of women. Guess we are just not 'trendy' enough and cool! Someone is missing the money boat and someone will eventually come out with something...probably when some of those "celebs" and manuf. reach my age. I am not advocating an overthrow of the government, but feel this is just the way it is.