BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

History gets made every week in Jennifer Luckey and Mary Kanotz’s new store on East 17th Street — or, rather, it gets preserved with scissors, paper, glue and plenty of photographs.

The sisters, both parents of students at Newport Harbor High School, recently launched Oh Scrap!, a store that provides materials and work space for people to preserve memories on the page.

Luckey formerly worked at Hugz & Kissez, a scrapbook store in Costa Mesa that closed several years ago, and she later made custom scrapbooks as a freelance artist. A few months ago, during a night out with friends, she and Kanotz realized how much her skills were in demand.

“People were complaining how there were no scrapbook stores around us,” said Luckey, who also has a child at Kaiser Elementary School. “I know how big the scrapbook world is. It’s one of the biggest hobbies out there.”

Luckey and Kanotz decided that night to open their own scrapbook business, and on March 17, Oh Scrap! opened in a tiny strip mall a few blocks from Newport Harbor High. The store features shelves full of different scrapbook materials — including paper, markers, glue, stickers and buttons — along with two long glass tables where customers can sit and make their volumes in-house.

The store’s slogan is “The Next Best Place to Home,” and the owners try to make Oh Scrap! as homey as possible. The work tables feature jars of free chocolate candy, while Luckey and Kanotz renovated the bathroom in back and coated the walls with pictures of their children and other family members.

“We figured if we can’t be with them, we should at least be able to see them every day,” Kanotz said.

If customers don’t have time to make their own books, the owners can produce them for between $16 and $22 a page, depending on the amount of detail. Luckey and Kanotz said the majority of bookmakers create mementos of their children, though they also get requests for graduations, weddings, anniversaries and other events.

The sisters hold down the store seven days a week, but they have allies as well. Family members sometimes help around the shop, while Cari Senour, a former colleague of Luckey’s from Hugz & Kissez, designed the store’s logo and business cards.

Senour, a Newport Harbor High alumna hasn’t made a scrapbook of her own yet, but she relishes helping others preserve their favorite moments.

“It’s more of a challenge,” she said. “It’s more of a problem-solving adventure, because you get all these pictures from somebody else’s life, maybe a different time and decade, and it’s all about matching the right colors and paper.”

FOUNDERS: Jennifer Luckey and Mary Kanotz

SPECIALTY: scrapbook materials

LOCATION: 427-B E. 17th St., Costa Mesa

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday

CONTACT: (949) 645-3334

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.