It may surprise you that a fun, personal hobby, like digital scrapbooking, could actually help strengthen your career, but I know from firsthand experience that it can!
Consider it for a second. Do you have a career where you EVER make any type of flyers, handouts, or work with digital photos? If so, you most certainly could benefit at the workplace by becoming a Digital Scrapbooker!
I can actually vouch for this theory, as I have experienced it to be true first-hand at my 9–5 job. I started within a customer service role: answering phones, filing, faxing, and placing orders; but I wasn’t very happy. I was good at what I did, but I wasn’t passionate about it at all. I wanted to stand out and be a little more creative at my workplace. I decided to take the turn towards that creative path when, one day, I was instructed to outsource the project of completing our product’s visual pricelists. These pricelists were a basic list of thumbnail pictures of all the items we sold and their prices listed beneath. It seemed like a simple project within PowerPoint, but we were honestly paying “an arm and leg” for this outsourced company to complete it for us! I decided at that moment that I would just give the project a shot and just do it myself. Thankfully, it was a success, and my boss was ecstatic!
My boss began asking me to take on new challenges and create even more, but things became way too complicated for PowerPoint. Because I was familiar with Digital Scrapbooking and Photoshop Elements, I knew we needed to get Elements to complete the projects he wanted me to do. Elements was only $100 and would save a lot of money in the long run by doing these projects in-house, rather than outsourcing … so the office invested in Photoshop Elements!
I was then in charge of not only making our product’s order forms, but flyers, handouts, and eventually, even our company catalogs! I began using my knowledge from Digital Scrapbooking to resize and fix product photos to email at Web-quality to retailers and customers, and increased the resolution to print-quality for our Press Contacts. Because I was familiar with Photoshop Elements and because I understood Digital Scrapbooking, I was able to lighten/darken photos, correct image blemishes, color-correct, add detail like text (with our contact number and address), and insert our logos onto images to create “branding.” I helped create tradeshow collage posters and was able to design and create professional hand outs because I was familiar with layers and layouts as an avid Digital Scrapbooker! It was truly incredible!
My value at the workplace was increasing quickly and I became the “go-to” person when it came it any type of creative marketing materials. I eventually became the official marketing manager at my company. For me, this was exactly what I had hoped for; I loved designing, making, and creating. My positive experience made me even more curious about Digital Scrapbooking and Photo Editing. I figured, the more I could learn, the more I could do within this area (and the less I’d have to do in other areas I didn’t quite like as much!).
Familiarizing myself with Photoshop Elements and becoming a Digital Scrapbooker was one of the best decisions I have ever made to help strengthen my career. And perhaps because it has helped me so much, I see how learning such an easy and fun personal hobby could potentially have the same effect on others!
For example, I have a friend who is a real estate agent. She does not know how to Digital Scrapbook, she does not know how to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, and she just doesn’t realize how much Digital Scrapbooking could directly impact her job in such a positive way! She works with photos of houses and properties all day long. She advertises them; marketing them to the public … she’s the best example out there of someone who should be a Digital Scrapbooking Pro!
