Laura Richters of Luverne is a scrapbooking marvel.
Last month at the Rock County Fair, Laura was sitting comfortably in a folding chair with a computer set up in her lap. She was archiving yet another family event.
“This is my passion,” she told me several months ago.
It’s a passion she started two decades ago when her oldest child, Brittney, was 2.
“Back then, I did what everyone else did — I had a shoebox,” she said.
I have thousands of pictures that no longer fit into one shoebox. They are storied in a plastic tub or digitally in my phone and camera.
As Laura quickly pointed out, “Until you print them off, they are just images.”
In an album, they can easily be shared and, in Laura’s family, given away as gifts.
Her passion was ignited when she was introduced to the company that sells scrapbooking paper, appliques and albums.
The company, Creative Memories, is returning to the market under a new owner. In the company’s absence, Laura has made do by purchasing from other companies or turned to the digital version to scrapbooking, which Laura was working in on her laptop.
Her digital scrapbooks are easily made into books like the one she was working on for Brittney’s trip to Nantucket.
“I know I should stop and let her do it, but I’m not there yet,” Laura said.
After all, her scrapbooking style is still being developed, as she looks back at her early albums.
“Stickers, stickers, stickers,” she said used to cover her album pages.
Now, pictures are the central focus.
“It’s our story,” Laura said. “You’re telling your story.”
She also recently redid the first page of her wedding album and is in the process of making scrapbooks for each of her 20 nieces and nephews. She will also finish each of her four children’s albums too.
Finding the time to complete projects has not been a problem for the avid scrap-booker. Some pages take hours but some are completed in a few minutes.
Helping her finish her projects are the weekend getaways. There she joins other scrap-bookers in marathon work sessions.
“It cheaper than going to a bar or a casino,” she said with a laugh.
With up to 25 people at the sessions, it becomes more of a social event as everyone shares techniques, design ideas and the story behind the pictures.
Those are memories worth passing on — not kept in shoeboxes or stored in a phone.
It’s well worth making the time to bring those memories alive in an album.