When I chose a Church, I knew I wanted a direct line to God with no middle man. That's why I'm not a Catholic. Creative Memories consultants are the Priests of the scrapbooking world. They are the middle men standing between me and my acid-free, lignin-free stickers, and frankly, I'm a little peeved.

The Creative Memories Business Model
The year was 1976. I sat on the mustard-yellow shag carpet and watched mom host her first Tupperware party. The Tupperware Consultant demonstrated her synthetic storage solutions to the oohs and aahs of a dozen housewives, and for providing a comfortable livingroom and a crudite tray, mom earned a funky orange lunchbox and, if memory serves, a plastic popsicle tray.

Creative Memories follows the same model. A consultants holds work-shops and has parties, and the customer orders products directly from the consultant. The consultant buys the products directly from Creative Memories at a 30% discount, and keeps the difference as her profit.

Consultants try to keep common items in stock, such as page refills, page protectors, and photo splits, but in my experience, most items must be ordered. If you know what you want to purchase, you have to:

1. Find a consultant.
2. Place your order.
3. Wait.

Creative Memories does not sell to buyers directly through stores or their web site. You must go through a consultant. If you're an instant gratification type like me who believes wholeheartedly in things like Rapid-Rise Reast and Minute Rice, this will bug you. To be fair, it does have advantages, which I'll outline below.

Creative Memories Products
The sole function of Creative Memories products is to help you preserve your photos and assorted memories safely and decoratively in scrapbooks. They sell everything you'd need to start and maintain a scrapbook. Supplies include:

• Albums in sizes ranging from 5X7 to 12X15. There are traditional cloth albums, leather albums, and specialty albums for babies, holidays, and weddings. All albums are subdued and tasteful. The white baby album, with it's raised, white baby shoes, makes a beautiful gift. The pages are held in place with straps that expand to hold a dizzying number of pages.

• Pages and page protectors. Traditional white pages for general use, black pages that look beautiful with old B&W photos, and lined pages for journalling. The protectors slide over your finished pages to keep dust, dirt, and fingerprints off your pictures.

• Tools for cropping your pictures and adhesives to attach them to the pages. The cropping tools let you cut your pictures down perfectly even, round the corners, etc. The adhesives include permanent photo splits and tape runners, and "corners" that keep your photos in place but allow for easy removal.

• Pens, papers, stickers, and die-cuts to decorate your pages for any occasion.

• Books and organizers for the serious scrapbooking enthusiast.

I've been very pleased with the quality of Creative Memories products. But...

The Competition
Creative Memories has competition. As scrapbooking has gained in popularity, stores have popped up all over, both online and in neighborhoods everywhere. I have two scrapbooking megastores within ten minutes of my house, and I've ordered stickers from several web sites.

These stores do not sell Creative Memories products, but they sell a variety of brands, and offer every type of product you can buy from Creative Memories, often at lower prices.As with Tupperware, Creative Memories products are touted as being higher quality than store brands. I can't make a generalization about this one way or the other, because my experiences have been mixed. The Creative Memories albums have the advantage, but I've found their page protectors to be much weaker and prone to tearing than the store brand. Creative Memories Corner Rounders are tops, but their stickers are limited and not very exciting. Stores carry much cuter sticker lines, such as "Me and My Big Ideas."

Of course, the biggest advantage to going to a scrapbooking store is that you can always get what you need the same day. Even using an internet store eliminates the step of finding a consultant and waiting for her to deliver your products to you.

What Do Consultants Offer
I admitted it already, I love instant gratification. Still, there are advantages to going through a consultant. The consultant I work with lives, eats, and breathes scrapbooking, and knows how to make any scrapbook page look beautiful. I can't get that in a store. While the staff are generally knowledgable about the products, they can't sit down with you for an hour, look through your photos, and offer suggestions. Most scrapbooking stores offer classes for small fees, but you're unlikely to get the personal attention you'd get from a consultant.

The Creative Memories Black Market
The only source for Creative Memories products is your official Creative Memories Consultant, who can only sell items to you in person. Yada yada yada.

Come here. No, closer. Shhhhhh!

You can buy Creative Memories products on ebay. 2644 items are up there right now, with new stuff bought and sold daily. Creative Memories specifically forbids consultants from selling on ebay, but apparently, they're not doing much to enforce it.

Tell Me, Amynimal, Should I Buy Creative Memories Products?
Yeah, sure. They're generally high quality, and consultants can be very helpful. Supplement your Creative Memories diet with cuter stickers from local stores and web sites, though, and don't be afraid to cheat on your consultant when you need a quickie. I've run to the store for emergency tape runners, and so should you.

Recommended: Yes