But it is a cutthroat business. Scrappers spent $2.6 billion on supplies last year, according to the Craft & Hobby Association, and one in four households contains a scrapbooker, making it more popular than golf. The Hall of Fame award can bring celebrity status, TV appearances and teaching jobs. After Contes declined to return her title voluntarily, irate hobbyists smeared her on blogs and threatened to flood her restaurant with fake reservations. “The b–––h doesn’t have a moral bone in her body,” wrote a commenter on the Scrap Smack blog. Over on the Creating Keepsakes Web site, angry readers cried cover-up and threatened boycotts when editors deleted unkind comments about the company from the site’s discussion boards. “I wanted an explanation,” says Noell Hyman, who was among the first to question Contes’s work. She got more than that: Contes and another woman whose work was questioned have been replaced in the 25-member Hall of Fame class for 2007. “Women prove time and again that they are ridiculous, vile creatures,” says Contes. She plans to retreat from the scissors-and-glue game—but she’ll always have the memories.
