and then there was none

For over 10 years I have belonged to a relatively small community of papercrafters. A community built around a shop, a message board and a gallery. People who participated in the same hobby as myself. There were times when I saw people come out of the woodwork to support fellow members...there were other times I watched as grown people descended into madness and meanness. The whole time I kept returning...to shop, to read the boards, to see what's new and to learn new things.

Two Peas in a Bucket changed things for me...you see as a child free middle aged woman, I never felt like I fit into the world of scrapbooking. The covers of most memorykeeping magazines reaffirmed the fact by rarely ever depicting layouts of people without kids. I attended crops filled with moms who questioned why in the world I would bother with this time consuming sometimes expensive hobby...who would care? For whom are you doing it. I felt like saying "myself" was never good enough. This feeling of exclusion remained until I found Two Peas.

Suddenly I found a place where other scrapbookers not so different from myself existed online. I was never one to share much...either in the gallery or the message board, but I always felt like I could. I now had tons of inspiration...travel, fun, daily life, school, jobs, friends...all kinds of topics that were important to me and didn't involve children. I started really making stuff and eventually opening a small papercrafting shop of my own.

Years after discovering digital scrapbooking on Two Peas...I became one of their designers...Kristina sought me out and expressed how much she loved my work. I was on cloud nine for a week. I was the girl who never submitted a single layout for publication...who had zero layouts in any gallery anywhere. I was the girl who was always on the outside looking in.  By choosing me,  a leader in the industry made me feel included, and that's a big deal. Sadly I had to end things a year later when my workload became insane. Kristina understood, and I went my own way.

As the news that has left my beloved scrapbooking community reeling settles in, I will begin to ponder the future of my hobby. I hope that wherever the members find themselves that they are kind to one another. I hope that this hobby expands and grows to include more men, more people of color, more childfree folks. I intend to continue my support for small business, but more than anything I will keep taking pictures. I will keep writing stories even and be thankful that for a while I got to be a part a something pretty neat.