Hello from Colorado

[ckbymommy]

I just discovered this site when a friend gave me a gift certificate for Christmas!

I have been scrapbooking for about 12 years or so. I own a digital photo studio with my hubby, I do some of the photography, design and upkeep of our website, create all of our promotional materials, and create our composites (basically, these are quick pages that we can just pull pictures into for printing). We are hoping to add a scrapbook store to the studio in the next couple of years.

A couple of years ago my mother in law sent me home with several of her old magnetic albums (I'd been asking for years), well it took me over a year to get them safely out of the albums and restored. So in Nov/Dec of 2005 I was getting ready to start printing the pictures out and scrapbooking them. At that point my hubby was worried about his moms health and how long it would take to scrapbook those 500+ photos and suggested that I do it all on the computer.

OMG!! How dare he suggest such a thing! When I first heard of digi scrapping, I basically said that it was nice for some people, but I would never go there - I love working with the 'real thing' and digi layouts will look so fake! Besides, digi scrapping is part of what I do for my job, so why would I want to do it for my hobby?

Well, he convinced me to at least research it and make a decision based on real knowledge rather than my own personal feelings, so research I did. By January I was so excited about digi scrapping that my local scrapbooking buddies were threatening to disown me (still haven't brought them all over to the dark side, but I'm working on it )

Now it's a year since the whole thing started, I completed a 128 layout album for my MIL in time for Christmas as well as another 25 or so for myself and several recipe pages. I've accumulated 9 and a half DVD's worth of digital kits and elements and still collecting. I have even tried my hand at creating, but just to use for those composites I mentioned earlier.

Anyway - that's my scrapbooking self.

I am birth-mom to 3 (5, 13, & 15), chosen mom to 3 (all adults now) and nana to 7 (the youngest two just added in Sept and Nov) I am active in my church and volunteer at the 'connections espresso cafe' that we have there - basically a little coffee shop/gathering spot for before and after services.

Well, if you didn't get enough info about me with all that rambling, feel free to ask whatever else it is you want to know, LOL! I'm looking forward to meeting all of you, and plan on getting some stuff into the gallery shortly.

~Melanie
Adhesive?! We don't need no stinking adhesive!

[twirlyjoy]

Hi Melanie!! Great to meet you, and to hear about you! Look forward to seeing your layouts in the gallery :)

[Daniellesmama]

Hi Melanie! Glad you found us. This is a great community and there are lots of nice people. I'm sure you'll have lots of fun here!

[redring]

Happy to meet you. My Mil is asking about the same of me . she wants me to restore some old family photos. I dont really know if I can though. Maybe I can pick your brain sometime? I hope you like the groupe. There are some wonderfull wemon here.

[okblues]

Hi Melanie and welcome! It sounds as though you have been very busy and that album was quite an accomplishment. I'm glad you found our site & I hope to get to know you.