My Creative Journey

I made my first scrapbook when I was 13; it consists of photos of my friends, newspaper clippings from every football game that year and ticket stubs, programs, etc. It's not pretty, but I love it.

I made an album of high school, and two albums from college before I discovered Creative Memories. I'll never know what possessed me to become a consultant, since I HATE trying to talk other people into doing things they're not sure they want to do, but while we lived in New Orleans the second year, I was a CM consultant.

When we moved overseas, I carried enough scrapbook supplies to last me three years, and for the first two years (one in Indonesia and one in Malaysia), I kept my album up to date.

Then in Nov. 2004, I discovered that the Digital Image Pro I had on my computer would open files in layers so that I could make digital scrapbook pages. I present to you my first layouts:


I still love that SP kit; I think she should fix it up and re-release it.


And then I discovered Shadows, but did NOT discover proportion.

With this one, I discovered how to "thread" the ribbon, AND I provided myself with a good reason NOT to cut my hair that short again. Ever.


Look at me! I learned sepia. ;)

I scrapped every photo on my hard drive (that hadn't been scrapped before) from Nov-January, but once Jack made his arrival on January 18, 2005, I didn't scrap another page FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

I still checked the galleries every once in a while, and I lurked at 2Peas, but motherhood sucked all of the creativity out of me. And you can see how I wasn't so much overflowing with it to begin with. ;)

Anyway, in 2006 I started scrapping again, and I mostly did lifts, so my pages aren't rock star quality, but they are livable. I was FLOORED when I discovered the idea behind Creative Teams! I couldn't imagine getting everything Mindy Terasawa or Michelle Coleman made FOR FREE! But I wasn't willing to slum it just to get free stuff; if I was gonna preserve my memories, I wanted to actually like the products I was using, and since I wasn't NEAR the kind of scrapper my favorite designers had on their teams, I didn't apply.

I did try out for Sara Carling's team, but that was my first and only rejection before my friend, Janet Phillips, started selling templates and took me on her team. I'm sure she only did it because we'd met IRL, but I don't really care why, lol. I'll always be grateful to Janet for my "big break".
That was my first page with one of Janet's templates. I still like it; you can see how much a template helped me. :)

The next January, I got on as a guest for Scrapkitchen Designs, which turned full time when she joined the sweet shoppe. I started doing a lot of their challenges, and in a couple of months, Dani Mogstad asked me to join her team. I still have the pm she sent me, and my reply, which was basically, "SERIOUSLY?! YOU want ME?" Then Kay Miller asked me to come on as a guest, and then for whatever reason, she asked me to stay. A couple of months later, I applied to be a Sugarbabe for the first time, got rejected, and then a week later got accepted. :) It was the highlight of my career.

Before I quit all of my CT's last November, I added Mira Designs & Holly McCaig, who I love and miss, but then I just realized how scrapping had taken over my life and I gave it all up, thinking really that I'd give it up forever. But in January the Shabby Princess came calling, and you just don't say no to a Princess, right? So here I am, scrapping exclusively for the Princess and loving it. Not too much responsibility, perfect amount of fun.