NEW TWIST ON THE FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM; SCRAPBOOKING BLENDS COLLECTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, GENEALOGY AND CRAFTS INTO POPULAR PASTIME.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

The last thing Linda McKee expected when she attended her mother-in-law's memorial service was that she'd discover a new hobby.

But friends of the deceased woman had collected photos and other mementos and - using brightly colored stickers, borders, backgrounds and decorative type - had fashioned a visual celebration of the woman's life on a big board, using the skills they'd learned putting together modern-day scrapbooks.

``I was just blown away,'' said the Woodland Hills woman. ``I said, `This is wonderful. I have to learn to do this.' ''

That was three years ago.

Today, McKee not only is an avid hobby scrapbooker, she is a paid consultant for Creative Memories, the Minnesota company that a few years ago turned scrapbooking from a child's rainy-day project into a respectable craft for adults.

The firm, established in 1989 with six representatives, began marketing scrapbooking materials through Tupperware-style at-home parties. Now, Creative Memories has 35,000 consultants in 50 states, said company spokeswoman Susan Iida-Pederson. Nearly a dozen other companies that manufacture and market scrapbooking supplies and equipment have also sprung up, along with three new scrapbooking magazines.

The New Jersey-based Hobby Industries Association of America estimated that this year, $200 million will be spent nationwide on scrapbooking supplies.

``We feel like we've started a whole industry,'' said Iida-Pederson.

Personalized pastime

Not just a pastime or a fad, like macrame and decoupage in their '70s heyday, scrapbooking combines crafting and archiving to attractively package and preserve a family's history, said Michelle Weston, owner of Party Smart in Glendale.

And that history is harder to hold onto than ever before since few of today's far-flung families have the luxury of swapping family tales over the Sunday dining table or around the fireplace, as past generations did.

``People have always liked to share the memories of their family,'' Weston said. ``This is just a new system of doing it. We all take hundreds of pictures and we all want to remember the things in our lives.''

Reyna Eskenazi, who says as many as 100 scrapbookers visit her Creative Invitations and Balloons shop in Woodland Hills regularly to buy supplies, likens the kinship many women feel for scrapbooking to the fondness some men have for collecting baseball cards.

``Men collect baseball cards to remember their good times - when they played baseball, when they watched their favorite players - and they can spend hours with them,'' she said. ``This is women's memories, their families, their good times.''

It's easier than ever to chronicle family events in pictures, with the photo industry offering cheaper cameras, one-hour developing and the ability to make inexpensive color copies of photos.

``The stickers and the colored papers get a lot of attention, but it's the photos that'll give the books value 50 or 100 years down the road,'' Iida-Pederson said.

Designed to last

Unlike grandma's albums, today's scrapbooks - fashioned with acid-free paper, pens and lettering, stickers, press-on type and other materials - are made to last for generations.

Eskenazi realized the value of the age-resistant materials last year when she searched old family albums to find photos to commemorate her sister's 50th birthday. The pages were yellowed, the photos faded, the tape and glue that had once secured photos falling apart.

``They were a mess,'' she said. ``I didn't want that to happen to my stuff.'' So she's trying to document her children's lives as they grow up, adding report cards, school pictures and other souvenirs as they're brought home.

Some scrapbooking novices, seeing others' finished projects for the first time, yearn to learn, but often doubt their ability to master the craft. Usually, though, they're on the road to expertise after a single session with the scissors and the fancy borders, said Julie Cohen, owner of All American Partystore in North Hollywood.

``The people who are doing this are not artists,'' she said. ``But you amaze yourself at how creative you can be with the right materials.''

Jennifer Genaston of Pasadena, a sales rep for a company that sells scrapbooking supplies and other crafts materials, said she learned scrapbooking on her own because store owners she approached a year ago - about the time West Coast residents were learning about the new craft - had no idea what the stuff was for. Now, she teaches classes.

``It's not hard at all,'' she said. ``Anyone can cut a frame. Anyone can cut a border. With the stick-on letters, you don't even have to write.''

Saving for later

Once you become a scrapbooker, you become an organized pack rat - with the emphasis on ``organized.'' Instead of throwing away concert or theater ticket stubs, you stash them away where you can retrieve them. Likewise, those Disneyland souvenir pictures. And the brochure from the fancy inn where you spent your anniversary.

``It's a way of organizing your whole thought process,'' said Cohen, who's making books for her 3-year-old and 8-month-old. ``When you go on a trip, you start putting stuff in a bag to save until you can do your scrapbook. It's really fun.''

Fun, sure. But not cheap.

``It can be an expensive craft because it adds up,'' Cohen said. ``But once you get started, you don't have to keep buying punches and scissors and things like that.''

At most crafts shops, a kit to make six decorated pages costs about $6, or an average of $1 a page. Decorative scissors and punches cost $5 to $8 each, stickers run about $1 a package, albums start at $15 or so. Or you can buy a kit to make a 16-page starter scrapbook - complete with scissors, stickers, album and decorative material - for about $30.

``Getting started is not the expensive part,'' McKee said. ``But you walk into a place like this (Eskenazi's store) and you go, `I have to have that. I need that.' And before you know it, you've spent $60. But even though you write the check and cringe, you go home and go, `Wow, I'm glad I got this.' It's your memories and it's worth it.''

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Making memories

New tools turn scrapbooking into cutting-edge trend

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(2) Jennifer Genaston, left, of Pasadena works on a scrapbook in Reyna Eskenazi's store, Creative Invitations and Balloons, in Woodland Hills.

(3) Puts a scalloped edge on a photograph with crafting scissors.

(4) A kit to make a 16-page starter scrapbook - complete with scissors, stickers, album and decorative material - sells for about $30.

(5) ``People have always liked to share the memories of their family. This is just a new system of doing it,'' says Michelle Weston of Party Smart in Glendale.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News