Baby Photos Blossom Into Business for Brighton Woman

Amy Braunscheidel, owner of My Stamping Creations, said her Brighton business has been operational since September 2006.

She recently submitted information about the business to Patch. If you have a business and want to participate in Patch's Small Business Shout Out, you can fill out the online form.

How did your business come to be? When I had my first child in 2003, I decided I wanted to be a Stay at Home Mom. Just like most first time Moms, I found myself talking tons and tons of pictures of my beautiful new born baby. Before I knew it, I had collected shoe boxes full of photographs. It was then, that I decided it was time to do something with all of these pictures. This is where I discovered my passion for Scrapbooking. While receiving many gifts for my newborn baby, and needing some "Mom time" I discovered rubber stamping through my local community. I realized how cost efficient it could be to create my own greeting cards and found a hobby in rubber stamping. Please let me make you aware that I am NOT and NEVER was the "crafty" kind. By discovering Stampin' Up!, I was able to work at my own pace, and dabble with wonderful products with no obligation, and no pressure. This was my kind of job, if that's what you want to call it.

What services does your business offer? I offer monthly rubber stamping/card making classes, monthly stamp clubs, in home workshops, scrapbooking classes, and I sell current custom made scrapbook pages individually. I am available for hire for custom scrapbooks as well.

What do you want your business to be best known for? A place where just you or you and your friends can come and have a fun night out making your very own hand made, hand stamped great quality greeting cards, whether it be, Happy Birthday, Thinking of You, Thank You or Sympathy, each month the choice is yours. I also take great pride in helping people preserve their memories for years and years to come. After all, how many times have you looked back at pictures and wondered, who was in the photo, or when the picture was taken, or how old you were? I like to take the guess work out of this, and make your memories memorable for not only you, but for generations to come.

What's your most popular service? My most popular service is the monthly card classes. I invite ladies into my home, where we create 4 beautiful hand stamped, hand made cards for a fee. The ladies love it because they come to my home with nothing but their favorite adhesive, and they leave with 4 completed cards. All materials are cut and provided for them when they arrive. How easy is that! No need to be creative because I have the samples made up for them to copy.

My second service, or equal service is my pre-made scrapbook pages. Many people just don't have the time to create their own pages, but want the look and feel of custom scrapbooks. I enjoy making this happen for them and provide pre-made pages for purchase so that the only thing that needs to be done by the customer, is to put the pictures to the pages. Viola, they now have a custom made scrapbook of their own.

Why did you choose the location that you did? I chose this area because when friends, and family discovered my talent, I had many friends and family recommend that I teach these talents to them and their friends. A business started to bloom from there. I began to hold card making classes in my home, I did workshops for new customers and was hired to create custom scrapbooks for weddings, baby albums and also sold many scrapbook pages individually. I also make custom invitations as well.

What's a fact about your business that most customers probably don't know? Stampin' Up! (which is where I purchase my quality product from) has been in business for 25 years. It is a strong company and I wouldn't put my name on anything else. I offer all sorts of classes both during the daytime for those that need an outing during the daytime and I offer classes in the evening. My largest class was my 6th Annual Holiday Stamp-A-Stack. I had 30 ladies signed up to make 20 Holiday cards in just one evening. This event is my largest event of the year. In fact I always have a waiting list and it fills up withing one week of promoting it. I have been told by MANY ladies, that this is like a Holiday party for them. We have a pot-luck dinner, Christmas music playing in the back ground and we surround ourselves GREAT company and lots of chatter!

For more information, call 734-968-9008 or email amy_braunscheidel@hotmail.com.