Scrapbooking as a job???

Yes, that is correct. One of the services I provide through Jilliene Designs is scrapbooking for others. I also do photo archiving, photo art on canvas, jewelry (and other fabulous creations found at my shop on etsy), custom designed scrapbooking and card making kits, arts and crafts instruction and party hostessing, hand made cards and invitations, classroom, at-home and in-studio instruction and I offer website/ marketing / personal creative services. My favorite, favorite thing out of this laundry list of services is scrapbooking. It is such a delight to put together a treasured keepsake for another and to be invited into their memories.

I just am wrapping up with one of my most treasured clients. We put together 2 outstanding albums chronicling her son's childhood achievements. We were just going to do 30 pages but it quickly bloomed into a 50+ page project. I have had wonderful material to work with because her son is beautiful ( iwish you could see him but I've blurred the photos to protect their privacy)! I am handing off the albums this weekend and I am feeling sad because I will miss his adorable photos and working with my lovely client.

I am also assembling an 18 x 18 heritage album for another client which has been a really big challenge. There are photos dated as far as 1913 and several that may have been from even earlier. I handle everything with gloves and have to have lots of space to spread out. It is sort of like detective work in that I am trying to create a visual family tree from the bits and pieces tat are writen on the backs of the photographs. I have almost everyone identified but I'm now struggling with the order to put them in the album and the overall design of each page. When working with old photos, the corners are often broken off and they come in so many different sizes. Estetically you want the page to look orderly but that makes putting photos in chronological order or by subject matter a challenge. If I want the pages to look sharp and visually pleasing I will end up compromising the visual story, but if I put the photos in precise order the pages tend to look cluttered and less than well-thought-out. I know there is a way to make it work with larger mats and adding captions - I just have to work it out.

I love my job!