Photos, Words & Memories

Palisadian Chris Martinez is a scrapbooking therapist, gently guiding people through the process of sorting and organizing their backlogged family photos. Martinez holds scrapbooking workshops in her home three times a month, where people can organize their photos, put them in albums, decorate the pages, and write journal entries about family trips, babies and kids’ school days, weddings and their family history. Through Creative Memories, a Minnesota-based company which sells scrapbooking supplies through a sales force of 90,000 consultants, Martinez sells all the items one needs to get started. But she does much more than that. She also provides a comfortable, nurturing setting where people can chat and form friendships while they tackle years of family snapshots, that have been saved in boxes and envelopes. In most cases, women are the family archivists. But some of the women who are determined to make albums for their own family say their mother never did anything with their own childhood photos. ‘My mom put everything in a box and never organized it. I had to go back and organize hers,’ said Martinez, who has made over 30 albums, including a heritage album where she pasted photos of older generations and wrote family stories she wanted her children to know. ‘I want my kids to have more than pictures, I want them to have histories,’ One common problem, she admits, is having trouble identifying some of the relatives in older pictures. Palisadian Corrine Bourdeau realized how important organizing her pictures was when her 7-year-old daughter Dominique needed to do a project about her ancestors at school, and it took months to get related photos. ‘Someday, her kids will just pull out an album,’ said Bourdeau, who spent a recent morning at a workshop in Martinez’s home, sorting through and editing photos of her two daughters. She filed the remaining photos in a photo-safe sorting box, already organized for a future scrapbook. ‘If you make an appointment to come here, you know you have the time set aside,’ said Jill Tabit, who was working on a scrapbook of a family vacation to Ireland. The social aspect of the workshop is also important. ‘I don’t do many creative things with other women, so I love this,’ said Bev Nuder, who was working on a book of her families’ many years of vacations in Sequoia National Park. ‘I feel very pampered.’ Martinez tries to create that environment for the people who attend her workshops. ‘I want them to bring their stuff and relax.’ She helps as needed and is well-stocked with items for sale, but the approach is low pressure. ‘When I first started doing this, I thought about what I would want done for me. I would want to really be taken care of.’ In fact, several of the attendees raved about Martinez’s homemade lunches, many of which are recipes from Cooking Light magazine, which are included in the price of a daytime workshop. An important element of scrapbooking products is that they are acid-free, so as best to preserve the pictures. Prices range from $36 for 12 x 12 albums, $19 for a photo trimmer, $10 for pens, and $1 for stickers on a variety of themes, such as holidays, babies, sports and travel. Lisa Scott, who has been scrapbooking since she was a teenager, was working on pages for her 2-year-old Savannah’s baby album. One feature of scrapbooks is they allow for papers and memorabilia as well as photos to be mounted within their pages. Savannah’s book began with a birth certificate and picture of a clock taken later to reflect the time of her birth. More recent pages included ‘Your first time at Disneyland’ written out with stick-on letters. Scott is an avid scrapbooker who recently went on a weekend trip to Big Bear to do scrapbooking, and who even has a portable luggage cart to tote her scrapbooking supplies. Recently, Martinez helped fellow Palisadian Virginia Mitchner organize some photos dating from 1980, not an easy task for a woman with a dozen grandchildren. ‘The different years were all mixed up. I felt overwhelmed, but Chris helped me get organized,’ said Mitchner, who finds scrapbooking relaxing. Martinez, one of several Creative Memories consultants in the Palisades, began scrapbooking when her 7-year-old daughter Annie was one. Five years ago, the consultant whom she had been buying materials from moved away and she decided to fill in the gap. Danny Gonzales, the manager at Village Photo & Digital Imaging, has noticed that in recent months, a number of local moms are coming in to scan photos and organize reprints. ‘It seems like moms were in charge of photography but once digital hit, dads would download the pictures into the computer,’ Gonzales observed. ‘The moms are coming in and saying, ‘I want my pictures back, they’re in the computer, nobody looks at them.’ They want to physically hold the photos.’ About half of her regular scrapbookers have moved into using digital cameras, said Martinez, who e-mails her digital photos to Village Photo to make prints. The steps that add up to a scrapbook start with sorting and editing photos; then cutting them to various sizes, if desired; laying them out; sticking them to the pages with double-sided tape or clear corners; decorating the page with stickers and paper; and writing captions and journaling. Pages can be simple or elaborate, and Martinez said a ‘plain and simple’ album can be done for $50. With its growing popularity, scrapbooking supplies can be found everywhere, from supermarkets and drug stores to specialty stores and stationery stores such as Black Ink on Swarthmore. ‘We can’t keep our 12 x 12 albums (which are covered in leather or fabric) in stock,’ said owner Patti Black. ‘People use them for celebrations, telling a little story for guestbooks. For people having a big party, they’ll send a scrapbook page to all the guests, who will each fill one out for the guest of honor.’ Despite assisting scrapbookers who come in to make prints on her digital machine, Cathy Martinez of Harrington’s Camera has not latched onto the scrapbook phenomenon herself. Cathy keeps up to date on her own photos by editing them heavily, throwing away what she doesn’t want and putting the rest in traditional photo albums. Chris Martinez has not only completed her own family albums, but has created scrapbooks for retiring clergy at her church, Corpus Christi. She is now going backwards: having recently completed the baby album for her 22-year-old son, she is completing the baby album for her 19-year-old daughter, and then will do a scrapbook for her own wedding (24 years ago) to her husband Albino, the owner of Albino Construction. Upcoming Creative Memories workshops/classes will take place on Thursday, March 10 and Wednesday, March 16 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $15 (including lunch) and a ‘late-night workshop’ Friday, March 18 from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. for $10. Call 459-7705 for reservations.