I live in Eastern Oregon with my Best Friend, Bill of 18 years and our 2 dogs. I have been stamping for about 5 years now and have loved every bit of it! I loved it even more once I became a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator!
My family is quite extraordinary and I am grateful for each and every one of them. We have 3 children who are grown and out of the nest and we have been blessed with 2 1/2 of the most beautiful grand babies you would ever want to meet.
I owe the success of my creativity to Bill and our children who supported and encouraged the strangest of projects. My projects first started looking like they were put together by a kinder garden student, not that there's anything wrong with that, but no matter how strange my project looked, my husband still oooh'd & ahhhh'd over how great I was coming along. (we can laugh about this now, but back then I was focused and serious on my work). Bill often jokes about the time and money that has been wrapped up in my addiction, but he's truly glad to see how happy it makes me to be able to create happiness for others.
When it comes to sharing and selling my cards, I owe the success of that to my Mentor and first Customer, Heather. She believed in me before I considered the fact that anyone would want to buy a card from me. She wanted to buy the cards from me and I wouldn't sell them because I didn't think they were worthy of being sold. I didn't think I was good enough so I continued to give her cards to give her employees once they hit a goal or did something extraordinary. Once I started running low on supplies, I agreed to sell future cards to her so I could replenish my supplies. I'm not even sure how long ago that was, but she's been buying cards from me ever since!
Along with selling greeting cards, I also donate cards to a community outreach program where the proceeds go back into the community to help families and I send cards to our Hero's in Iraq and the Hospital in Kuwait. It fills me with a sense of pride to know that a soldier knows my gratitude AND is able to pay forward my gift yet again by forwarding the card to a loved one addressed from the Soldier.
So, with this being said, be prepared for a story of how this all began...
I was raised as the only son my Daddy never had. I grew up fishing, hunting, and working on cars or pickups with him. My parents were divorced by the time I was like 13 or so. The only reason my mom wanted custody of me was for the child support. Once I was of legal age to have a say who I wanted to live with, I quickly packed my bags and moved to my daddy's house. Being with my mom in it'self wasn't too bad. I knew she didn't love me, she never had and I had come to accept that, but what I wouldn't accept was the way the new man in her life treated me. He was a dominating pig who had to be center stage. Well I gladly gave it to him.
Once I grew up and started my family, my relationship was still very strong with my Daddy. Not only was he still always around me, but I gave him the one thing he had longed for quite a while. A grand son. Not long after that, he was blessed with a grand daughter, and then another grand daughter.
Anyway, I'm getting off task again. The path that lead me down scrapping has to do with my Daddy. Years before he died, he had asked me to sit with him and go through old family photographs so he could tell me who the people were & what was going on at the time the pictures were taken. Well, like most ungrateful kids, I kept putting it off. My career, the kids, and other things kept taking higher precedence than sitting with Daddy going through old pictures.
When we lost him, I acquired his belongings. Included in those belongings were the very pictures I had put off. Now I'm sitting there with hand fulls of old pictures, barely able to figure out who is who and absolutely no way to tell what the events were or what was going on at the time. Regardless, I didn't want our family history to be lost, so I started organizing the pictures. It just so happened my youngest daughter at the time had a school project where she had to put together a scrapbook. She solicited my help and I quickly got hooked.
We completed her project and I was left with yearning to keep creating. I started scrapping w/ Daddy's old family pictures and it quickly turned into a monster. Thousands of dollars later, I have taken over most of the living room and two whole walls.
Once I got a taste of Stampin' Up! Scrapbooking quickly sprouted into card making and i've been scrappin' ever since and lovin every minute of it!
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