Online digital scrapbook business rewarding

By ANDREW BRYAN FLACH
Staff Reporter

Ridgeland resident Kim Crothers has found a way to stay at home with her children, satisfy her need for artistic expression, and operate a successful business on an international scale.

It has been just over two years since she opened her online digital scrapbooking business, Creative Snaps. Since that time, her business has grown substantially. She now has customers in countries like Australia, Canada, and Iceland.

Crothers has also won a spot as one of 25 people in the 2006 Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame, and has been contracted by the Sony Corporation for design work on three occasions.

“My world and everything totally changed when I began doing this,” said Crothers.

Crothers said what started as a hobby has exploded into something beyond her wildest imaginings. She said digital scrapbooking has provided her with an avenue of artistic fulfillment that had been lacking in recent years.

When she and her husband, Kevin, had their first child, she decided to stay at home to raise her son, something she had long planned and wanted to do.

But Crothers said within her lay a desire to continue using her artistic talents, as she had done as a fine art/graphic design major at Mississippi State University and later in the workplace. Digital scrapbooking fulfilled that desire.

“For me, it is a creative outlet,” said Crothers. “I would never have dreamed I could operate a business and stay at home with [my] kids. I was hooked.”

Crothers first happened upon digital scrapbooking in February of 2005, when she discovered that she could design a scrapbook on a computer, an instrument in which she was already well-acquainted.

Crothers said that she was exposed to computers from an early age. Throughout her youth, she would toy with various computer programs, creating new and wild designs, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for her to go into digital scrapbooking she said.

Crothers said, as strange as it may sound, she feels she was born to do this work, and she believes her business to be a culmination of her past experiences and pursuits.

“I just felt like my whole life had led to this,” she said. “It combines everything I know how to do.”

Essentially, what Crothers does is provide clients with design kits to be used in conjunction with photo editing software, so that they can create their own digital scrapbooks. She said digital scrapbooking provides advantages absent in the traditional paper method, such as greater efficiency in design and ease of organization.

But if clients wish to create a physical scrapbook, they can do so by first putting it together on the computer and then printing it out. Crothers also provides a greeting card service, but her main focus is on the kits.

She is assisted by her husband, who help her put the web site together and acts as her IT technician.

Crothers, her husband, and two children, Quinn and Kacy, were also featured in a Sony advertisement for a product whose design she took part in. And her design work is frequently displayed in scrapbooking publications.

Crothers said much of her success has come unexpectedly. She never planned for her business to be as big as it is, but she’s glad it is, and plans to continue as she has.

“It’s something you can’t really plan to happen,” she said. “I just want to keep doing what I’m doing, and (hope to) inspire others.”

Creative Snaps can be found at www.creativesnaps.com.

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