I started in February 2003. I had gotten married the previous year (to my now ex-husband) and wanted a way to capture the memories we were sharing with his daughters. Since they lived several states away, we didn't get much time with them so I wanted it to be something 'special.' I made a handful of paper scrapbook layouts but was frustrated by how crappy and simplistic they looked. I couldn't get my hands to do what my brain was envisioning, KWIM?
I stumbled upon 2Peas and found Ali Edwards' digital AAM pages. Lightbulb moment! I could do this scrapping on the computer?! SIGN ME UP! Coincidentally Scrapbook-Bytes had opened the month before & so I found that place after searching around the Internet for 'computer scrapbooking tutorials.'
That was my digital home for a long, long, long time. This was before people were creating digital supplies at all! I served as a Honorary Design Team Member and then a full-fledged Design Team Member there after winning a 24 hour contest they ran. I also helped with online chats & events, writing newsletter articles, vetting new Honorary Design Team Members, running the Featured Product program, and planned a digital retreat, several IRL get-togethers, and spent a long weekend at one fellow digital scrapper's house in Maryland + two weeks at another digital scrapper's house in Washington.
Over the past 14 years, I've worked for dozens of designers on dozens of CTs, seen the industry move from sharing supplies to buying CDs of supplies to opening up digital shops, watched dozens of sites & designers retire (and, in some cases, unetire), met so many digital scrappers IRL, seen the advent of art journaling and pocket pages, and was here when the doors opened at SSD.
I'm proud to say that it'll be my two year Babe anniversary in the next couple of days & I can't think of a better place to be for the next 14 years of my digital scrapping journey.
