I first met Siobhan because she volunteers to help run IFIF — Interracial Families in Friendship. A local Columbus Ohio support group for interracial families. Siobhan is the “list mom” for the email list. She manages it by making sure people stay on topic and gently guiding people to the discussion list when they forget and start chatting on the list for announcements only. I was impressed with her before I even met her in person because I know that it takes special care to keep any email list drama-free and she does a terrific job of it.

She has been a stalwart supporter of Support for Special Needs and is one of our founding members. She is also a Creative Memories consultant and for fun week, we talked about the scrapbooking group she created on the site and why having that outlet is important to her.

Can you talk a little bit about how you got into scrapbooking in general? And digital scrapbooking in particular? (Did you do the hard copy kind ever?)

I have always been a photographer, always kept photo albums. And I was very resistant to the idea of scrapbooking. My preconceived notions were of fancy, frilly time-consuming pages. I am not at all into crafty things, frankly because I am simply not crafty.

In 2000, my oldest daughter in her first year. A friend of mine became a Creative Memories consultant and invited me to an open house. I turned her down. I was not interested. She was very insistent, so I finally caved. I would go but I was not going to be involved in scrapbooking.

What I found at the open house, however, was information about photo preservation, and that interested me very much, I learned how my current photo albums were damaging my photos. I wanted that to stop. However, it wasn’t even preserving my photos that truly sold me on “scrapbooking” and Creative Memories in particular.
In addition to always having been a photographer, I have always been a writer. Even as a teenager, I wrote captions on slips of paper and stuck them alongside my pictures in pocket albums. There was no way I could resist Creative Memories’ passion for preserving the stories with the photos. I left that open house with a small album, a kit for completing the pages in it, and a pen. That was the beginning of my making albums for my family for life.

When my friend moved out of town, I signed on as a consultant so that I could continue to work on my albums with my friends. For the first years of my business, I ran monthly crops in my home, taught classes, and worked diligently on my own albums to the point where I had all my photos in albums and added them as I took them. Being able to tell the stories as they were happening, capturing the emotions and details that the pictures alone couldn’t tell, brought me and my growing family much joy.

With much trepidation, I started shooting digital photography in 2002. I was diligent about sorting and printing all my digital images and continued making traditional albums. When Creative Memories introduced digital photo storage/organization software, and later digital scrapbooking software, I was thrilled. Being able to organize and easily work with my images right on my computer brought a new level of easy and simplicity to my work. As more and more people started working with digital images, it was natural to begin to teach the digital side of scrapbooking as well.

Today, I primarily make digital albums that I have printed and shipped to me by Creative Memories Photo Center. I have shelves full of completed traditional albums and digital albums all mixed in together. One of the reasons I am so thrilled with digital albums is that all my “mess” – my papers, embellishments, photos, and tools are contained within the body of my laptop. I can take them literally anywhere and work on them. And when I have a completed album, I can make as many copies as I like with no additional work. I do now, and always have, given albums as gifts.

I still have some catch-up work to do with my girls school albums – traditional albums in which I am capturing samples of their school work, along with class photos and other school related memoriabilia. So, I do still work in traditional albums as well. Other traditional albums that I continue to keep are filled with portraits of the girls, one for each of them.

And then can you talk a little bit about Creative Memories and why you chose to work with them?

Creative Memories is a direct-sales company that uses a home party plan for marketing products. I chose to work with them because they put a lot of time and money into scientific research to ensure that the products that we sell are photo safe and long lasting. Creative Memories also made my job and my album making simple. With a philosophy of “simple pages, completed albums,” I was not intimidated by the idea of scrapbooking any more. Simple creative tools and products, and lots and lots of idea books, allowed me to learn to make quick and beautiful album pages that emphasize my photos and my family’s stories.

As a very busy single mom of two very busy girls, what does scrapbooking give you?

As a mom, scrapbooking has given me so many things. When my girls were babies and toddlers, it gave me a grown-up thing to do and social time that I very much needed. It also gave me a way to document my children’s milestones as well as my own memories – thoughts and feelings that, believe it or not, I would forget as time went on no matter how impactful a given moment in time was at the instant.

Having my own Creative Memories business also allowed me to be a stay at home mom while making some additional money for our family. When my husband passed away in 2008, I had all those years of family albums with pictures and thoughts and feelings of and from their father. These are a comfort to my children in a way that nothing else could ever be.

The other thing that scrapbooking gives me is a creative outlet. When my girls were small, I was tired all the time. I wasn’t able to read or write as much as I was used to doing. But I am an artist, and I was always toting my camera around. Scrapbooking made me look more closely at my photography; it made it better. It also made me more aware of moments to capture, so I took pictures that I might have otherwise not considered. When the images are printed, or sorted digtially, creating an album gives me time to enjoy my children in a deeper way, and it reminds me – even in the most challenging of times – of the love and joy that my family brings.

How do you find the time to keep up on it?

Today, with both kids in school and my time crunched as we all feel, I find that working digitally is the biggest benefit to my being able to keep up with my albums. While I never thought I would be, I am connected electronically, and my laptop is never far from my reach. Because of the time I spent making traditional albums, I know which albums I now want to create. I make a yearly album for each of the girls with photos from their school field trips and activities. Because I know I am going to make that album, I can start the project in the fall and continue dropping the images in as they come along. By the time the school year is out, I have a completed album.

Another time saver that I use is making themed albums. Vacations, in particular, make a good stand alone album. Between the school albums and vacations, I capture the majority of our lives.

I work on my albums in the moments I have. It helps a great deal not having to get out papers and other supplies and set them up, but I also have a table in the basement dedicated to traditional albums. I keep the current project there and work on a page or two as I can. I work on my digital albums mostly in the evenings after the girls have gone to bed and while I watch tv. It is relaxing and helps me to unwind from a long, busy day. (I just have to watch it because once I get started working with the images, I can stay up far later than I probably should!)

I also take time on occasion to get together with friends at their homes and work on albums. I am not able to do this as regularly as I was, but when I can make it work, it is a joy.

Like anything, making the time, and taking the time, to work on albums takes some self-discipline. It might be easier to sit and mindlessly play games of Bejeweled Blitz or click through friends’ photo albums on Facebook. I have learned, however, that capturing the memories and feelings when they are fresh is not only far easier for me but also far more rewarding in the end product. I want my children to have those memories preserved for them, and I want that for myself as well. I get a great deal of satisfaction when I’ve completed an album and can share it.

What do you hope people get out of the scrapbooking group?

I hope that people will get courage out of the sscrapbooking group. If they need it and want it, I hope they will get tips that will help them. I hope that the camaraderie will bolster each one of us as we move through our lives, with good times and difficult, and preserve the images and memories for those we love. And I hope we have a whole lot of fun!

By the way, Siobhan has a coupon code to share on www.cmphotocenter.com – Use her CM ID 41373165 for 20 FREE prints!

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