Where Are the Brown Kid Stickers?

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day, and I’m in the process of making four scrapbooks for Mother’s Day, so I’ve had scrapbooks on the brain all week. I currently do more digital scrapbooking – that is, scrapbooking using my computer – than traditional paper scrapbooking. Unfortunately, these media have one annoyance in common: A lack of embellishments featuring “brown” people.

If you take a look down the sticker aisles of your local scrapbooking or craft stores, you will find lots of cartoon white boys and girls looking back at you. The only multicultural stickers I’ve seen in stores are from Me and My Big Ideas (MAMBI). They are very cute, and kind of expensive, and they’re it if you stick to bricks and mortar. I asked my local scrapbooking store why they don’t carry stickers with brown kids on them. The owner replied, “Because no one would buy them.” I told her, we live in an area where white people are the minority, and you’re telling me that no one would buy stickers that featured brown kids?!? Oy.

Online, the pickings aren’t much better. Distinctly Me offers five sticker sheets featuring black babies and children. Arte Latin Oh! offers a variety of Spanish scrapbooking products. Although not specifically scrapbook-related, Cleansweep Supply offers “Multicultural” packs of paper, crayons, paint, and pencils. I had a short list of bookmarks to other sites, and all of them are gone now. Very disappointing. (Note: Even adoption.com seems to have disappeared its scrapbooking selection.)

While I was shopping the online sales on Saturday night (Addiction? What addiction?) I found one digital designer who regularly includes brown kids in her kits. Latte Dah Designs has a Theme Park kit that I know I’ll buy soon.

There is one online store devoted to adoption scrapbooking, Scrap and Tell. The proprietor, who has a multicultural family herself, has collected many adoption and multicultural scrapbook items and offers them for sale. What makes the site great, however, is the kits. The site offers digital scrapbooking kits for several countries and cultures.

I have searched high and low online, and still can’t find embellishments that look like Jack to add to my scrapbooks. I do at least find the occasional brown face among the wares. I’m not sure I’ve seen one Asian-looking child, outside of MAMBI.

Perhaps scrapbooking is a hobby enjoyed primarily by white women. However, it seems to me that there is a niche to be filled. If only I had taken that Photoshop course in college!

We have three copies of the children’s book Ten Days and Nine
Nights by Yumi Heo to give away! Please visit our giveaway
post to enter!

Photo Credit: Robyn C. 2005.

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