I have been making scrapbooks since I was very young. I vividly remember my best friend and I making some in middle school/high school where we basically used bound books and taped memorabilia inside of it, like ticket stubs, friendship bracelets, dead dried flowers, pictures, notes from school, etc. Looking back, they were quite crude scrapbooks compared to the gorgeous ones I see created daily now, but still it was a beginning place and where I started.
I started my first "nice" scrapbook in 2001, after I got married and was living in PA with my new hubby and without any family around. It was a nice way to put together all of my new wedding photos and keep me busy at the same time. Soon, I found myself with twin newborn babies and lots of photos! I found a friend who was a consultant for a company that sold scrapbooking products and she got me hooked! I soon began making beautiful books to preserve my babies' first year of life. I loved that I could easily cut photos, add some stickers and pretty paper, and I'd have great pages!
Somewhere along the line, I started a different style of preserving my photo memories and stopped using that particular company. They were still good, but didn't quite have what I wanted for my pages any longer. I started shopping local craft stores and the like for products to make my pages "pop." I loved the effect, but lacked the amount of time, and patience, it often took to create the truly remarkable layouts I would see on the pages of magazines like Simple Scrapbooks, Scrapbooks Etc., and Creating Keepsakes, so I stopped. I went on a scrapping hiatus because I just felt stuck and had no idea what to do.
After about a year, I realized that I was really missing my creative outlet. Scrapping was the one time that I felt like I could sort of zone out the outside world and just create something for myself. It didn't have to be perfect. It didn't even have to be great. As long as I was happy with it, I accomplished my goal. Needless to say that was getting restless with no way to have that time and outlet I wanted and a year's worth of photos were sadly just sitting on my computer begging to be brought to life and preserved in an artful way. I felt like I was being neglectful really. Then, one day I went garage sale-ing and stopped in at a house and this woman had tons of hand made cards and some other scrapbook accessories out. She also had a book out called Close To My Heart and I asked if I could take one. Later, after pouring through page after page of not only gorgeous layouts that I loved, but ones that I thought I could actually recreate as well, I emailed this woman and found out a little more about the products and placed an order.
Well, long story short (yeah, I know I've already gone waaaay past that point!), I've now been friends with that same woman for about 5 or 6 years now and she even introduced me to the MOMS Club that I'm currently involved with too. I've continued over the years to make purchases from her because I really like CTMH's products. They're reasonably priced and have products themed in such a way that it makes putting a layout together very simple. They also are big into the clear acrylic stamps too, which is something I've never really been into. I'm trying though and learning so maybe it will happen. I'm trying to embrace the stamping, so we shall see. They have some awesome stamps though to be honest and some of the cards that people make with them are wonderful; I aspire to be able to make mine look half as nice!
So, I've taken a plunge and decided to be a Consultant with CTMH also. Yes, yes, I know I'm already a consultant with Thirty-One Gifts but they don't conflict at all and in fact, I can use lots of my wonderful totes from 31 for my craft stuff! It's really a win-win! I don't know how aggressively I'm going to actually "sell" the scrapbook stuff; basically I just want the discount because I love the products and use them all the time anyway.
I would really enjoy putting together some workshops though or crops where people could get together and work on pages they're doing, with or without CTMH products. I'd like to have some supplies available to them though so that if they should need something, that I would have it available to them. A consultant that I used a long time ago used to do that and I always loved it. It was great because if I discovered I needed black card stock and didn't bring any along, I could just buy a single sheet from her she kept a tally going throughout the day and we just paid before we left. She would often have other accessories available too. I would really like to be able to provide that same thing to people that may come to work with me too.
My goal with this blog is simply to share the company specials with you, share my pages, and cards with you, and basically just communicate everything crafty and artsy dealing with CTMH and myself. I hope you'll check in with me every now and again and find this interesting to read and view. Hopefully you'll find some inspiration for your own pages and it will urge you to preserve your memories too!
~Mel
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