Author:
Jennifer Evans

Jen loves paper crafts including scrapbooking, cardmaking, stamping, diy parties and home decor. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her supportive husband and two children. As an artist her whole life, it wasn't until she walked into a scrapbook store eighteen years ago when she realized she could combine her love of mixed media with memory keeping! She has been creating with paper ever since. Jen works along side industry creative and product developer Heidi Swapp with American Crafts as her marketing specialist, educational assistant, and customer service support. Miraculously over three years ago, Jen met Jessica Carey of The Hook Nook to learn crochet and instead was hired as her assistant! Since then, she has helped The Hook Nook partner with American Crafts to bring a collection of products to the fiber industry. Jen is now working with Jessica as her COO and her passion to teach others to create often spills over into everything she does.

Never Give Up on Being a Maker

Maker
6/1/2018

Being a maker is more than having a hobby. A maker is someone who can not help but be creative because they were created to be creative. A maker is someone who creates because their soul yearns to be creative when they are not. Maybe you can relate.

What does it mean to be a memory keeper | Using @heidiswapp Pineapple Crush by @createoften
Finished Scrapbook Page using Heidi Swapp Pineapple Crush Collection

I have been creative my whole life, however, my passion was painting. Acrylic, watercolors, and pencil was my favorite mediums through high school. When I graduated, I gave up painting thinking it was just a hobby. It wasn't until five years later that I would walk into a scrapbook store and fall in love with memory keeping. I realized that my love for mixed media could be used with papers and photos and I started my very first scrapbook.

I started working part time in a local scrapbook store where the owner, Sue, took me under her wing and encouraged me to be the artist that she knew I was. To start, she made me create scrapbook pages for every endcap in the store. Ha! An assignment like that unleashed any self-doubt that I had about my work. However, I had a deadline and Sue was persistent that I create from my heart. I fell in love with designing pages, techniques, and most of all teaching others how to scrapbook.

What does it mean to be a memory keeper | Using @heidiswapp Pineapple Crush by @createoften
Heidi Swapp Art Screen and Art Screen Ink

The next year, I gave birth to my son and stopped making once again. I thought as a mother, painting or scrapbooking beyond a baby album was a luxury I couldn't afford. My time should be focused on my family and not on myself. I felt selfish if I took time for just myself. However, during this time I was in a dark postpartum depression and very sick. One day, my twin sister came to see me and told me, "Jen, I think you need to start scrapbooking again." She handed me a flyer for a contest to join a scrapbooking design team. It took me almost a week to gain the courage to enter the contest and I am so glad I did.

What does it mean to be a memory keeper | Using @heidiswapp Pineapple Crush by @createoften
Heidi Swapp Art Screen Ink

I won the contest and it changed my life. It gave me the confidence to wake up in the morning and trust that God would help me find myself again while fighting depression. I was given those deadlines again to challenge me to create. That position opened the door for me to work with amazing companies in the crafting industry which helped shaped me into a better person, wife, and mother.

The last nine years has taken me on a wild creative ride! I have worked with some of the industry's top brands including Heidi Swapp with American Crafts. For almost seven years every time Heidi Swapp releases a new collection I get excited and the passion of being a maker is ignited again. I love to bridge the gap between mixed media and scrapbooking with simple techniques, like using Art Screen Ink on a scrapbook page. (You can see how simple it is to use screen ink on paper here.)

What does it mean to be a memory keeper | Using @heidiswapp Pineapple Crush by @createoften
Instax photos are used here by printing them from the Instax Share Printer and my phone

Some people laugh and ask me, "Why scrapbooking?" The truth is that the photograph is becoming a rarity in our age. Everyone is taking more pictures than ever before but some children haven't seen a photo printed of themselves or have ever flipped through their own baby album. Something similar happened to my father in law as he always thought there wasn't any photos of himself as a child. You can hear about his story and how I found and restored his baby photos here.

 

After seeing my father-in-law's reaction after seeing his baby album for the first time, I knew that telling my story and my family's story will always be worth it. You can see his reaction below.

 

While on this maker journey I have found that I was created to be creative and that my story matters. However you tell your story through your own craft or through memory keeping, never let it die. Keep making on.

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