Time was, making a scrapbook involved little more than pasting some vacation photos in a wide-paged album, along with a memento or two.

Not any longer. "Scrapbooking," as the niche has become known, is by some estimates a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the U.S., a growing segment of the $29 billion arts and crafts industry, involving elaborate books, fancy paper, stickers, lettering of all shapes and sizes, even three-dimensional elements like beads, buttons or yarns.

"It's becoming so big because it's the most worthwhile craft a person can do," said Ronell Floding, who owns Ben Franklin Crafts with her husband, Steve. "It's history. It's remembering your kids birthdays and their sports and having a history of their lives."

Capitalizing on that trend locally, the nation's largest (by far) arts and crafts chain, Michaels, recently opened a Village Crafts store on North Montana Ave. between Target and Bon Macy's. Store manager Brian Erlandson said long lines and eager customers greeted the store's grand opening almost two weeks ago.

"There are so many creative people out there, and so many people who want to try these kinds of things," Erlandson said.

Headquartered in Texas, Michaels operates more than 900 stores across the country, Erlandson said. The Village Crafts name is a relatively new concept for the chain, designed to serve smaller markets with an average store size of 11,000 square feet (compared to more than 18,000 for a standard Michaels). Helena's is the 17th Village Crafts store in the chain, he said.

In a nod toward the growing scrapbook niche, Michaels has opened stores in its home market of Dallas called ReCollections, devoted exclusively to scrapbooking.

Village Crafts enters the same neighborhood as Jo-Ann's, another national craft store chain that moved last year from Helena Ave. to North Montana, between Albertson's and Shopko. Jo-Ann's has traditionally focused as much on sewing as on other crafts, but is increasing its space devoted to scrapbooking as well.

"The scrapbooks are almost like journals complete with pictures along with them, so that in 50 years your kids can look at them and learn what you were like," said Jo-Ann's manager Cheri Raulston.

In addition to increasing the retail space from 8,000 to 12,000 sqaure feet, the move gave Jo-Ann's a loading space in the back, meaining new inventory doesn't have to be trucked in the front door. The extra space accommodates more stuff for scrapbookers and quilters, as well as a larger array of seaonal items.

The hobby appeals to a mostly female audience, with Erlandson claiming that 78 percent of his customers are women and Raulston estimating the number climbs to 85 percent at Jo-Ann's.

Locally owned Ben Franklin has been in the Floding family for some 30 years, but it's only been in the last five to seven that scrapbooking has taken up a growing slice of the store's shelves, Ronell Floding said.

"Our floor space has probably tripled from what we used to have, and our resources to get new products in the store are just overwhelming," she said.

John Harrington can be reached at 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.