Q:: How long have you been involved in digital scrapbooking and what got you started?
Maya::
I've been "digital scrapbooking" since before the term had even been coined and even before I knew what scrapbooking was. My first scrapbook was actually more of a personal website created for our son Kai. He was born in December 2001 and I created the site as way to document and keep track of his growth and development and to share all of that good stuff with friends and family. Besides including the standard journaling and photographs I was also attracted to playing with photoshop and altering photographs, putting fairy wings on some of his very first baby photos. I shared his website regularly with my "due-date" friends, an online mommy's group of gals who also had babies in and around the month of December that year. One of those ladies was actually a scrapbooker and it was she who first noted that what I was doing was similar to her own cut and paste version of memory keeping. I knew what scrapbooks were but had never really knew that it had become a popular craft until she introduced me to 2 Peas in 2002.

I was hooked immediately, but instead of purchasing paper and embellishments and all of the other traditional fixings, I used Photoshop to create all of my own papers and elements and with those created digital scrapbooking layouts. Initially I enjoyed creating realistic looking pages that mimicked the traditional style, and I would reveal the truth when I posted the layout title noting that the design was 100% digital.. In the early days this got lots of attention, both good and bad in the traditional paper scrapbooking community, but for me the most important attention came from the few others out there that were also using their computer to create pages. Scrapbook-bytes was born in January of 2003 as the first digital scrapbooking site and we were all a part of that. It was a very exciting time for us as digital pioneers. We all knew we were on to something so much bigger than ourselves and growing fast. I remember when there were only just a couple of hundred of us. It has been a real privilege for me to have been able to watch the unfolding of this amazing community and industry and to have played a part in it from the beginning. Completely awesome!

Q:: How did Scrapbook Graphics get started? How did you come up with this store name?
Maya::
In the early days we each made all of our scrapbook pages from pixel scratch. If you wanted to create a page about going to the beach, you created the papers, the elements and the journaling. There was no resource or store to download from. We didn't even scan or photograph elements initially. It took quite a bit of time to create one layout, especially when most of us were learning our software by trial and error. As the community started to develop so too did the idea of sharing elements and knowledge. We had a pool to which we would donate elements that we would have created , so that others could use them on their own pages. One of my first donated packages of elements were metal clips of all sorts of shapes. The demand for elements was pretty apparent though when you looked through the galleries and could see the same clips being used over and over again from layout to layout.

The idea occurred to me that I could help others with their own scrapbooking by sharing my own layouts. However, I wanted to allow room for their own personalization and individual expression, so I merged the layers of my own personal layout psd's into elements and backgrounds, so that others who used the page could arrange and alter the elements to their own preferences. I called these Scrapsets and put them all together on a CD called Digital Illusions.

I created Scrapbookgraphics to sell the CD from. The initial CD production costs set me back only just over a few hundred dollars but I was so broke back then and didn't have a few hundred dollars. So I announced the CD and took pre-orders using the funds raised to produce the CDs. While the CD was being produced, we came up with the idea to offer a download copy to people who had purchased in advance. I was so nervous about making them wait, already having their money in my hands. I felt so encouraged and supported by their faith in me though, as this was entirely a new idea to the community.

The response was beyond amazing. I was completely floored by how successful it was. In fact, this was really a life altering event for me on so many levels. I experienced first hand the truth about what it means to truly follow one's bliss. Scrapbooking is what I loved to do with every spare moment of my time. It was so incredibly joyous to have found myself in this art, which was inspired by my love for my family. To get paid for it as well, was really just gravy. I knew I had stepped on the right path and the reward was beyond what I ever could have anticipated.

I chose the name Scrapbookgraphics because that was simply what I was providing. It was a difficult decision to "keep it simple" because as a creative person I am generally the type to try to come up with clever non-typical ideas. Scrapbookgraphics simply and clearly stated my domain, and that felt amazing for me.

Q:: When you first started this store, was your intention also to represent other designers and sell their products?
Maya::
Not at all. There wasn't really any other designers at this time. I know of only one or two other people who were doing something similar in that year. However, there was quite an explosion of designers born in the year and years that followed. Frequently I would be contacted by people asking me if I would allow them to sell their designs in my store, and I always refused. I was pretty happy being accountable only to myself and my customers. I really celebrated my independence back then. I had spent pretty much all of my adult life trying to awkwardly fit myself in to roles that didn't really feel right for me. It was the very first time in my life that I felt I truly had found myself. I was really enjoying making up the rules as I went along and not having to explain myself to anyone.