After 15 years toiling for Hewlett-Packard as a network
administrator and a year as a stay at home mom, Kim Mannino
discovered her creative side.
After 15 years toiling for Hewlett-Packard as a network administrator and a year as a stay at home mom, Kim Mannino discovered her creative side.
Mother to Angela, 11, and 8-year-old twins A. J. and Joey, she started scrapbooking seven years ago after a friend gave her a “Creative Memories” kit. The kit came complete with everything Kim needed to create baby books for her boys including a photo album, cutting tools, paper and stickers. All she had to add were the photos.
Soon photographs of the kids and family outings, sticker packs, and colorful paper and pens had taken over the kitchen table.
“I’d have to clean up before each meal because we were home all the time,” Mannino said.
She eventually took over a corner in the bedroom as her workspace so she could save the time of cleaning up all her supplies when she took a break from the albums to tend to the family.
In 2000, after two years of scrapbooking, Mannino decided to become a “Creative Memories” consultant to support her habit.
“You can be a consultant to support your hobby,” Mannino said. “To buy your supplies at a discount or make a little bit of money or a lot of money.”
The business model for “Creative Memories” is similar to other direct selling organizations. Mannino started out selling “Creative Memories” products to people she met through church or school groups, slowly adding more clients as her reputation grew.
She plans once-a-month workshops and two weekend retreats each year to ensure her clients are making the most of their scrapbooks.
“I have a 2-year-old and anyone who has ever tried to do anything with a 2-year-old knows,” said Donna Steele, a friend and client of Mannino’s. “I would never be able to pull out all this stuff without my daughter wanting to cut up photographs for me.”
During a recent workshop, Steele planned to work from 10am to 10pm on her scrapbooking while her husband spent “daddy time” with their daughter.
The workshops give the women a chance to share ideas as well as copy some of the ideas Mannino has displayed on poster board throughout the house. One board shows all the things that can be created with a different color paper and a circle cutting tool – basketballs and footballs, turtles and pigs, and even flowers and fish.
“We call it scrapbooking by committee,” jokes customer Heather De Rosa. “We don’t complete one page without help, input or design advice.”
At the workshops, Mannino shares her scrapbooking tools with clients but they purchase their own paper, pages and sticker albums.
“When I was doing it just for myself as a hobby, it gave me a lot of personal enjoyment,” Mannino said. “Once my customers started coming back, they shared stories of what the albums meant to their families.”
Mannino’s own albums are close to her heart. She has created school days albums chronicling her children’s education, baby books from their early days and family albums. But for Mannino, the albums are about more than just her children’s lives but the history of the family.
“It’s so much more than just personal fulfillment,” Mannino said. “We are truly putting together a legacy.”
In one family album, Mannino created a page dedicated to a pillow. As a little girl, she always slept with a turquoise pillow when she visited her grandparents. When her grandmother died, her grandfather gave the pillow to her and she has it in her house.
With photographs of her grandparents and her handwritten story of the pillow in an album, she knows her children will remember its importance long after she is gone.
“I just wanted to be a mom,” Mannino said. “But now I understand how people have a passion for their work.”
