Pear Tree helps you treasure your memories

Data disaster drove owner Monica Partridge to scrapbooking

Monica Partridge’s passion for scrapbooking was galvanized by an unfortunate loss of data.

The motorcycle-riding, former tower crane operator lost her photos following a road trip.

“I’m a preacher of ‘print those pictures’ … put them in a book,” says Partridge, now an east Hamilton craft store owner. “It’s more interesting for your family down the road.”

The self-proclaimed craft addict says “memory keeping” is one of the main reasons people get into the hobby. Scrapbooking is like hard copy Facebook, but without the foibles of digital technology.

Prior to the pandemic, Partridge had a following making and selling crafting kits on her online store. She gets a kick out of teaching customers “the basics” and showing off her creations and more advanced craft projects on her YouTube channel — for example, stash boxes that look like classic novels and a “stacked envelope” Christmas card booklet kit.

Since her physical storefront Pear Tree Treasures opened in June 2020, she’s seen a surge of interest from young people; “25 to 30s.”

With the younger generations, she was doing plenty of curbside pickup at the 1813 King St. E. shop, but now that COVID is easing, Partridge is getting back into in-person craft classes.

Getting customers going, with the basic papers and supplies available in her kits, means “they will come back in and get different papers for different themes,” Partridge says.

“Back in the day, scrapbooks were just newspaper clippings cut out and stuck in one of those static cling photo albums,” Partridge says, “but now there’s so many different techniques.”

Scrapbookers can create their own size and style of album. They can use a variety of kinds of paper. They can use dies to cut paper in a variety of different ways.

“There’s so many beautiful paper lines out there now that nobody had access to before,” Partridge says. Now you can get many of those from her shop.

And those papers are not just for scrapbooking. Custom cardmaking has been popular at the store this fall, especially with holiday season around the corner.

Partridge can’t wait to crack open a Christmas card kit for her upcoming card-making class.

“It really is fun,” she says.