About The Portland Scrapbooking Meetup Group

How it came to pass....
Cris, our organizer, discovered the PORTLAND SCRAPBOOKING GROUP (though it had a different name ) when she was looking for things to do in her new area, Parkrose Heights. She had relocated in 2005 but after an extensive bedrest and hospital stay (baby #3), she still had not met any new friends or fellow scrapbookers so she came upon MEETUP on the internet. There was this lone scrapbooking group in Portland, but it was not an active site. She signed up anyway and shortly after the organizer dropped out . MEETUP sent Cris an email asking if she would be the organizer and after much reflection, she took over. She changed the name to PORTLAND SCRAPBOOKING and began making connections to get scrapbooking and cardmaking events on the calendar.

It has been a lot of fun to see the group grow. Several of our members are former home based business consultants who have years of experience and tons of toys and tricks to share - and they are willing to open their homes and welcome us in . We have members from as far south as Salem and as far north as Vancouver. The group safely encompasses the entire metropolitan area.

Our group became a fee based group in June of 2007, to help pay for the website expenses and to encourage membership based on a desire to be an active, contributing membership. Events can be requested or hosted by any of our members and sharing of information and events is strongly encouraged .

---

Learning about our meetup group means learning about all of our Organizers since without the benefit of all their team work, this group would not survive.

Organizer:

Cristina Gwynn is a former Creative Memories consultant and Telecom Analyst who is now a stay at home mom of three precocious children -Madeline (6), Catherine (4) and Theodore (2) and wife to Tim, whom she married in 1998. She relocated to NE Portland in 2005, knowing only her in-laws on that side of town and could not find anywhere near by to scrapbook - having left all her previous partners behind in Beaverton. Her husband works in property management for an entertainment venue, so she is not given a lot of time to scrapbook but she is working on it. She believes that there should always be affordable, friendly, welcoming places to go to scrapbook. And once in a while, it would be nice if the kids were somewhere else to allow her to get a page or two done! She has just begun truly exploring making her own cards, so watch out! She spends her free time (ha ha ha) volunteering with the Girl Scouts of America, TOPS Club, Inc., and at her daughter's school. She is a devout bunco player and is helping coordinate the BUNCO FOR A CURE event to benefit the Komen Foundation of OR/SW WA.

Assistant Organizers:

Julie Reynolds is a stay at home mom, who worked at a drug store for almost 12 years. She quit in June 2006 to take care of her sick father. She has a 7 year old daughter, Rylie, and has been married to husband, Ryan, for 6 years. She first got into scrapbooking when she was pregnant and then in November of 2005 went to her first official Stampin' Up! party and was hooked. She signed up to be a demonstrator in January of 2006 but was unable to make much of a business out of it since she was taking care of her father 14-16 hours a day from July to October. So with 2007 here she decided to make it more of a business and of course a hobby. She loves meeting new people and learning how others do things differently than she does.