In February 2004, a reporter for BYU's Daily Universe opened the Utah Valley Yellow Pages and counted the scrapbook stores. There were 22. That is the cleanest single number we have for how big the hobby was here, and it is the right place to start, because almost everything else people say about Utah's scrapbooking years is half-remembered. This page sticks to what was written down at the time.
The roots: a records conference and a church assignment
The earliest account we found of a Utah scrapbooking business comes from a Zions Bank "speaking on business" segment, archived on KSL.com without a date. It begins with a claim, attributed to no one in particular, that many people believe scrapbooking began in Utah, and that Utah is tied to several of the largest scrapbooking stores, catalogs and magazines.
The segment then tells the story of Keeping Memories Alive, "a scrapbooking store and wholesaler in Spanish Fork" owned by Anthony and Marielen Christensen. Marielen had been speaking about scrapbooks since 1976. The business started officially in 1980, when the couple was asked to present at the World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City; afterward they had the names of 2,500 people who wanted more information. Marielen said the work began as a church assignment to motivate people to write their personal histories. They could not find the paper they needed, so they made their own.
By the time of the segment, the store was mailing 150,000 catalogs a year to people who had asked about it and selling to more than 1,200 stores nationwide.
That origin matters for understanding the boom. In Utah County, the scrapbook was never only decoration. It sat next to the personal history and the family record, which is why the hobby's second life, covered in our guide to scrapbooking in the FamilySearch era, runs straight into genealogy.
The peak: 22 stores and "half the store"
The 2004 Daily Universe story is a snapshot of the boom at full speed:
- 22 scrapbook stores in the Utah Valley Yellow Pages, including Memory Lane Paper Company, Keeping Memories Alive and Pebbles in My Pocket.
- Pebbles in My Pocket operated three Utah stores, and the paper reported that the Orem branch averaged about 4,000 sales a day.
- At Roberts Crafts in Provo, an employee said scrapbooking had gone "from one or two aisles to half the store" in three or four years.
- QuicKutz, which the paper called a local company, made die-cut accessories; individual dies ran up to $10 and alphabet sets $99 to $250.
- A beginner, the story estimated, should budget about $100 for basics.
The paper cited a Hobby Industry Association estimate of $2 billion in national scrapbooking sales. One shopper put the social side plainly: "It's the new quilting activity and becoming a community social event for women and mothers."
The makers came here
Stores were only half of it. Utah County also made the product.
Pebbles Inc. grew out of the stores. When the Deseret News reported its sale in October 2009, it said Brenda Birrell founded Pebbles in 2001 "as an extension of the Pebbles in my Pocket retail stores," which had locations in Orem, Salt Lake City and St. George and stayed under her ownership after the sale.
American Crafts, the buyer, was also based in Orem. Pebbles stayed a separate brand under the American Crafts umbrella. American Crafts kept buying: industry blogger Nally Studios recorded its 2014 acquisitions of the cardstock maker Bazzill Basics in April and, shortly after, We R Memory Keepers, a Salt Lake City company known for albums and punch-board tools. Which of these companies still operate here is in the craft-supply manufacturers of Utah County.
Paper Wizard shows the pull from outside. A BYU Magazine profile describes Eric and Bonnie Smith, both 1985 BYU graduates, who began making scrapbooking kits at home in 2000, ran a laser-cutting warehouse in Chino, California, and moved the business to Lindon in 2006. Eric called Utah the "hotbed and the heartbeat of scrapbooking." The company had more than 1,200 wholesale accounts and ran five laser machines an average of 16 hours a day, six days a week.
And in January 2013, the private equity firm H.I.G. bought Die Cuts with a View, a scrapbooking company that Infrastructure Investor, reporting the deal, called "the fastest-growing private company in Utah."
Meanwhile a Spanish Fork-based craft company, Provo Craft & Novelty, put a cutting machine on the market in the mid-2000s that started as a scrapbooker's tool. That machine became the Cricut. Its story is in our history of Provo Craft, Roberts and the Cricut.
Why here
No source we read sets out a single cause, and we will not invent one. The record does suggest two.
The first is purpose. Keeping Memories Alive started, by its owner's account, as an effort to get people writing personal histories, and a valley full of families who already kept records was a ready market. Our genealogy industry history traces the same instinct into a much larger business.
The second is clustering. Once the stores, wholesalers, designers and manufacturers were here, they reinforced one another. A kit maker in California moved to Lindon because this is where the industry's "heartbeat" was. A Provo craft store gave half its floor to the category because its customers asked for it.
The contraction
The boom did not end on one date. It thinned.
In December 2011, the Daily Herald reported that Roberts Arts and Crafts would close all its stores in January and sell only online, citing the economy and big-box competition. Nationally, Nally Studios' review of 2014 reads like a list of endings: the closing of the online retailer Two Peas in a Bucket, the shutdown of Paper Crafts Magazine, the liquidation filing of Creative Memories (whose assets were later bought and the brand relaunched), the sudden end of Northridge Publishing, and the end of the Craft and Hobby Association's traditional summer trade show in Chicago.
The Herald named two causes for Roberts: a hard economy and competition from big-box stores. We did not find a contemporary source that measured what phone cameras and digital photo storage did to the hobby, though that is where much memory-keeping went. Whatever the mix, the 22 independent stores of 2004 are almost all gone.
What remains
- Pebbles in my Pocket is still listed on Google at 1132 South State Street in Orem, with recent reviews from shoppers who mention custom cuts and current paper lines. It posts no hours and its website has not been updated in years, so call (801) 226-2632 before going.
- American Crafts is still listed in Orem, at 1530 West 1200 North. WARN Act data compiled by WARNTracker lists a layoff of 92 American Crafts workers in Orem dated April 2025. We could not confirm the company's current plans for the site.
- Keeping Memories Alive no longer turns up in Google's listings for Spanish Fork, and we could not reach its old website. If it still trades in another form, we did not find it.
- The big boxes carry the supplies now. Hobby Lobby lists a Scrapbook & Paper Crafts department, and its four Utah County stores and the two Michaels are where most people buy paper and albums. Our guide to craft stores after JOANN lists them.
- The habit survives in other forms: digital photo books, FamilySearch Memories, and the holiday boutique circuit, where paper crafts still sell every November.
The 2004 shopper was right about one thing. Scrapbooking was the quilting of its moment here, a craft that doubled as a reason to gather. Quilting is still going strong in the valley, as our quilt shop guide shows. Scrapbooking shrank back to its core, and moved partly onto a screen.
Related Guides
- Provo Craft, Roberts and the Cricut
- Scrapbooking and Memory-Keeping in the FamilySearch Era
- The Genealogy Industry in Utah Valley
- Quilt Shops and Quilting in Utah Valley
- A Short History of Spanish Fork
- A Short History of Orem
Frequently Asked Questions
Did scrapbooking start in Utah?
How many scrapbook stores did Utah Valley have?
What was Keeping Memories Alive?
Is Pebbles in my Pocket still open?
Is American Crafts a Utah company?
Why was Utah County such a center for scrapbooking?
What happened to the scrapbooking industry?
Where can I still scrapbook in Utah County?
Sources
The facts in this guide were checked against these sources. Hours, fees and rules change, so confirm anything time-sensitive with the source before you go. How we make Provo.com.
- Design and Conquer (Paper Wizard profile), BYU Magazine. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Pebbles in my Pocket website (last updated 2014), Pebbles in my Pocket. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Hobby Lobby home page (department list), Hobby Lobby. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Speaking on Business: Keeping Memories Alive (Zions Bank segment, undated), KSL.com. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Scrapbook gives fun for all ages (Feb. 13, 2004), The Daily Universe (BYU). Checked October 20, 2026.
- American Crafts buys Pebbles scrapbooking (Oct. 3, 2009), Deseret News. Checked October 20, 2026.
- HIG buys fastest-growing Utah company (Jan. 16, 2013), Infrastructure Investor. Checked October 20, 2026.
- 2014: Scrapbooking's Year in Review, Nally Studios. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Breaking: American Crafts Acquires We R Memory Keepers (2014), Nally Studios. Checked October 20, 2026.
- Roberts Arts and Crafts to close (Dec. 1, 2011), Daily Herald. Checked October 20, 2026.
- American Crafts layoff, Orem, UT (April 2025), WARNTracker (WARN Act data). Checked October 20, 2026.
- Google Places listings: Pebbles in my Pocket, American Crafts Orem (Oct. 2026), Google Maps (Places). Checked October 20, 2026.
