Scrapbooking Hobby Becomes A Naperville Woman's Business

Walking down the stairs to Karen Suida's basement is like walking into a Michaels arts and crafts store.

The walls are lined with packets of colored stickers, letters and papers. There are boxes of tools and shelves of albums, stencils and pens -- in fact, everything the scrapbooker could wish for.

For Suida, scrapbooking is not just an engrossing hobby, it's a career. Six years ago she became an independent consultant for Creative Memories. She now earns a living by showing others how to do what she loves to do so much.

Suida, who has lived in Naperville for 20 years, is a 48-year-old grandmother of four. She says her 8-year-old grandson loves to scrapbook with her.

"Most people find it very relaxing," she said, still hard at work positioning photos on a page. "I put some music on and the only thing on my mind is scrapbooking."

For the past two years Suida has run an arts and crafts group at Edward Hospital for cancer patients.

"They bring in their photos and I help them to scrapbook," she said.

Speaking as someone whose only scrapbooks are volumes of her own press clippings, I wondered why people actually needed help to stick photos on a page.

"I can show people how to make it more decorative," Suida explained. "How to make a picture pop using different techniques and the right colors."

She said the hobby is probably more popular now than ever.

"People really feel the need to preserve photos for their children," she said. "You can theme them. Scrapbooking makes photos so much more interesting to look at. It's a form of journaling. When you show someone your scrapbook you don't have to explain every picture to them. They can look at it and work it out for themselves."

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