Find the right color of paper, cut or tear, glue and repeat.

See if the pattern fits what you have in mind or if you want to build a three-dimensional image. If not, then start again.

Such are the fundamentals of scrapbooking, a regular program at the Makerspace in the Woodland Community College Library.

Put together under the direction of Librarian Dena Martin, the activity is a way for students to work with their hands and not just their heads. It’s one of many programs through the Library, which includes crocheting, sewing, decorating coffee mugs and creating rubber stamps.

“Sometimes scrapbooking can get expensive,” Martin tells four students who stop by for instruction, “but it doesn’t have to be. We got most of the things today from Dollar Tree. Paper can get pricy but we got the paper for today on clearance. It can be economical but still be fun.”

“This is all fresh from Michaels, JoAnn’s and Dollar Tree,” Martin tells the students as she crafts her own individual pages.

“Jackson’s feeling ‘red’ today,” Martin notes while looking at Jackson Brooks, a tall red-haired youth, who works quietly on one side of a four-corner table that is filled with colored paper, ribbons, 3D stickers, decals, glitter and glue — lots of glue.

Brooks is cutting and pasting red paper, red ribbon and other material for a book the subject of which is still being considered.

Scrapbooking is a way of preserving or presenting and arranging personal and family history in book form and typically includes memorabilia such as photographs, printed material and artwork. It’s become more popular in recent years by people of all ages.

It may seem odd in today’s digital world that college-age students would create such permanent, tangible collections preserving their memories but it’s an old art that dates back to the 15th Century, according to reference books, and was commonplace in England where it became a way to compile information that included recipes, quotations, letters, poems and more.

The albums were used much like modern-day college and high school yearbooks as keepsakes, sometimes ever-evolving.

At Woodland Community College, students create illustrated albums for families and friends containing photographs, poems and ephemera such as letters and notes. Martin encourages students to even create a scrapbook explaining how to scrapbook.

“For workshops like these I’m always wondering if I should do a presentation before the making or just jump in there,” says Martin, whose sparkling, diamond-shaped metallic green and blue jacket could serve as a scrapbook backdrop. “It’s probably better to let students jump in and start making, which is probably more compelling because who wants to listen to me tell them what to do?”

She encourages people to take their time and experiment in arranging individual pages, noting she herself moves things around a lot, sometimes wholesale and sometimes bit by bit until she’s satisfied.

She also urges the students to select bright and lively colors for a more uplifting display.

One relatively reluctant scrapbooker, Joseph Gutierrez Fuentes, who is in his fourth year at the college, thoroughly examined many pieces of decorative paper in several different binders before deciding on an upbeat, colorful design that he then trimmed into an 8-by-8-inch shape using a cutting board.

Gutierrez Fuentes is a Pioneer High School graduate and is still trying to decide what he wants the focus of his scrapbook to be. He was a regular in the Makerspace the previous year, working on a variety of projects to keep him occupied between classes.

“Just go with the flow,” Martin tells the students. “The borders around your photos don’t have to be straight, they can be whatever you want.”

Completing a scrapbook, Martin says, “is a hard one to explain. I don’t know. It would definitely take a lot of hours. It would depend on what a person wants their scrapbook to be. It’s not just a page, right? It might take a whole year.

“It would depend on how fast people are,” Martin continued. “It could be very time-consuming project. But it’s also supposed to be fun.

“It’s a journey, right?” she said. “And then you get the finished project. I have friends who have scrapbooks they’ve never finished because there’s always something else to scrapbook.”