NATCHEZ — They arrived in town on Thursday and by late Saturday night all that was left were memories — albeit smartly cataloged memories in ornate scrapbooks.

The fourth annual Scrap-N- on the River ended at midnight on Saturday but not after some serious scrapbooking was done.

One vendor at the event said in 2004 scrapbooking was estimated to be a $2 billion a year business.

And the Scrap-N- on the River event at the Natchez Convention Center is a part of that business.

It may be helpful to think of the event like a huge sewing circle minus the sewing.

Everything is devoted to scrapbooking.

There were 10 vendors at the event, the space they did not occupy was filled with women at tables making scrapbooks on almost every possible topic.

One woman was working on a page for her book that was dedicated to her own face; another had made a scrapbook about Scrap-N- on the River.

“This is a good crop,” Martha Pierce said looking over the crowd of about 200 on Saturday.

When a group, no matter the size, gathers to scrapbook it’s called a crop.

Pierce and her business partner Pat Tisdale own Remembering Moments in Petal, their store sells scrapping supplies and had a booth at the event.

“It’s just so much fun,” Pierce said.

Pierce and Tisdale are also part of a scrapping subset where women break off into groups and form scrapping clubs.

Pierce and Tisdale are in the Scrappin’ Tinis.

They have pink shirts with their group’s name and a martini glass for their logo.

There were countless other groups like the Tinis at the event.

For Tisdale scrapbooking is a way to archive her family.

“It’s great when you sit down and go through all the old pictures,” she said. “This gives you a way to keep them.”

But all that archiving takes a great deal of time.

Pierce said she can easily spend four hours at a time working on a book.

“It could be 2 in the morning and my husband wants to know when I’m coming to bed,” Pierce said.

And the time consuming nature of scrapping was taken into consideration when the event was scheduled.

Pam Frank, the event’s coordinator, said the event was scheduled from 9 a.m. to midnight each day so creativity would not be cut short.

“When the creative juices get flowing you don’t want to have to stop,” she said. “You don’t want to shut that down.”

And women scrapping apparently won’t stop for much.

Not even lunch.

Most women ate while they worked. Discussion of which restaurants could provide fast service or what places would deliver pizza to the convention center could be overheard at most tables.

Kathy Kirby just keeps a big box of crackers at her table.

She has been scrapbooking for 15 years.

Her table, like all the tables there, is literally covered in tools and materials.

She brought 12 sets of stamps for her trip from Baton Rouge to Natchez.

She has 300 sets total.

“It just builds up over time,” she said of her tools.

Kirby even has an electric die cutter so she can have perfectly uniform letters, in multiple styles, to put on her pages.

The most favored die cutter by scrappers is called the Cricut, pronounced cricket, most table had two or three.

And while Kirby acknowledges she has an enormous amount of tools for scrapping she said it’s justified.

“Everything has to be just so,” she said. “And when you’re done, you’ve made an heirloom.”