Design Team

Rachel Kaufman

Founder and Owner

I have been scrapbooking in some form or another for as long as I can remember. As a small child, I made books about movie stars, poster collages of my dreams and wishes for my future, and magnetic albums with family and friends' photos, embellished with stickers and handwritten journaling written on construction paper. I graduated to a wedding 'storybook' album made for close friends in 2000. Soon after, I was introduced to the 'new' world of scrapbooking...

The publication of my album called "Sedona Moments', about moments of clarity in my life, in the Write from the Heart section of Simple Scrapbooks in Nov/Dec 2007 (click here and here) played an important role in helping me develop my teaching business, and for that I am so grateful.

When I first started scrapbooking, I covered events, trips and the like. I came to realize that the things I loved to scrapbook about were about my heart and soul. I'm a firm believer in the value of psychotherapy - and found that while other people were journaling as part of their therapy to get their feelings out and expressed, my best and most complete way to do that as part of my therapy was by scrapbooking and then studying and discussing it - so I created a unique tool for helping process my life. I am so thrilled and so motivated to share my 'way' of scrapbooking with others as it has helped me so much, and continues to, even to this day.  I have really enjoyed the chance to watch others take my vision and transform it into something that speaks directly to their hearts. It is my passion and my dream to help others understand themselves, deal with life's difficulties and celebrate their inner and most private victories through our craft.

I live with my family in beautiful Santa Monica, California, just 10 blocks from the beach. Seriously, you gotta come out here-it's amazing!

Rachel's Blog:  Inside Out

Tammy Onderdonk Klass

Creative Director

Hi everyone! My name is Tammy Onderdonk Klass and I am thrilled to be a part of the SFTIO team! I have recently joined the team to work on the integration of our brand image with new business segments and projects. And, I am sure, lots of fun in between!

I keep busy during the day as a professional in the apparel industry. I am truly excited to bring my knowledge of design, marketing and my creative background to SFTIO. I know that it is a perfect fit! I believe that scrapbooking is about what is inside. The feelings that you get from hearing a word, seeing a picture. Releasing dreams, fears, inhibitions, and hopes on to a page. It is something that is magical.

I live in NC and have two beautiful daughters. I am involved with community theatre and am passionate about the art community where I live.

Melissa Elsner

Design Team Coordinator

Hi everyone! My name is Melissa Elsner and I am a recent resident of the awesome city of Chicago, by way of the Pacific Northwest. 

I am beyond thrilled to be part of the SFTIO team because this place embodies how I scrapbook. As a former art teacher, I needed something to keep my creative juices going and what better way to still be creative and preserve memories at the same time! Several years ago, it was suggested to me to use my favorite hobby as a way to creatively journal. After my first "therapy" session, I was hooked and have primarily scrapbooked, "inside out" style, ever since. I have been published in both print and online publications as well as contributed to various opportunities and assignments. It is my pleasure to to head up an amazing group of designers, whose goal is to showcase how cathartic and easy it is to express ourselves through a scrapbook page. I do hope you join us! 

When I'm not scrapbooking my crazy inner world, I'm exploring this big, glorious and wonderful Windy City of Chicago. 

Melissa's Blog: The Profound Brunette

Diana Brodeur

Hi! My name is Diana Brodeur. I live in Oklahoma with my two daughters. I work as an Information Security Officer at a local bank. I was introduced to scrapbooking in 2004 by one of my coworkers. I was instantly hooked and have been scrapping ever since! I usually scrap in the evenings when my girls are in bed or on the weekends. Now that my girls are older, they love to scrap alongside me.

I am honored to be a part of the SFTIO team!  I feel that this design team will help me break out of the box and create more pages based on my personal thoughts and feelings. I feel that it is important to have layouts based on my everyday as well as those of my children. I want my girls to know what their mother was thinking, feeling, and going through in her life as well as theirs.

I currently am also a design team member for the Webster’s Pages Clean and Simple team. I have been published in Creating Keepsakes, Scrapbook Trends, Making Memories, Creative Memories, and Scrapstreet.com Magazine.

Diana's Blog: A Spark of Creativity

Jennifer Matott

My name is Jennifer Matott and I live in Liverpool, New York (Outside of Syracuse, NY). I have two little boys and a husband of 12 years! I am an art teacher in a K-6 public school but have taught 7-9th grades for 14 years. I love to "play" with materials and media and sharing that love with my students is my joy in life! I have my BFA in Sculpture and Painting and while I do create my own fine arts, I have found with 2 little ones, scrapbooking has become my creative art form. I've been scrapping and creating mixed media for over 15 years. Mixed media allows me to get creative with imagery and still create a 3D effect using a variety of media. My pages lean towards the dramatic and I love experimenting with papers and pushing the limits of what can be done. Distressing, inking, paints, and textures are a constant in my work. There is nothing that I won't attempt to put into my printer and print images on!  However, I think my goal in all this crazy creation, is to capture my spirit and the spirit of my family on my pages for the future in a style that reflects my love of art.

Currently, I am a design team member of WOW Embossing powders, Basically Bare, Get It Scrapped! and Faber Castell DMC. I'm also a new Prima Educator! I've been published in several paper and online magazines, including Scrap N' Art, Scrapbooking and Beyond, Scrapbook Trends, and others. I hope to inspire you to record your memories, feelings, events, and passion in a fun and unique way.  I'm honored to be serving on this design team!

Jennifer’s blog:  Art Talk

Lori Wilbanks

Hi there! I'm Lori, from sunny Florida. I am a single, free-spirited, fun-loving gal who has worked as an educator for 15 years. I am the Director of Education at a well known learning center and love working with kids of all ages and abilities.

I started as a scrapbooker in my twenties and my style has changed through the years. Once I was introduced to mixed media and art journaling, and felt the joy of having paint covered fingers, I never looked back. My style changes all the time and I love to delve into mixed-media, art journaling, sketching and watercolors, scrapbooking and finding new ways to visually represent and document what is going on in my life. I was an active part of the SFTIO community when it first began and credit that to a huge time of growth for me. Participating in the challenges and working with the beautiful kits helped me see this craft as a form of self-reflection and self-awareness. And now I'm back, to let YOU know, I can really shake it down....oh, sorry, sometimes I confuse song lyrics with conversation...whoops! ;)

As a single woman, with no husband or kids, I think the concept behind SFTIO is such an important one. It's GOOD for me to reflect on my own life, to document my days, to create art with my own voice. 

I also currently serve on the design team for Paper Issues and Gauche Alchemy, where I also create and edit the monthly newsletter. I am thrilled to be back at SFTIO and look forward to sharing my journey and being inspired by YOU.

Lori's Blog: Wild Colored Sprinkles of Me

Kiki Halbert

Hi everyone! I'm Kiki Halbert and I'm thrilled to be here. I currently live in Canada's capital, Ottawa with my husband of 7 years, along with our furbabies - one dog and two cats.

I remember my very first scrapbook. It was a giant sketchbook that I bought that was made of flimsy kraft-coloured paper, and I just taped in momentos of my years in highschool, and a few memories shortly thereafter. That was back in the late 80s/very early 90s. And I didn't scrapbook another moment of my life again until after my engagement to my husband. I started my way back to scrapbooking digitally, in 2005 and scrapbooked our lives together, along with some cherished family memories. I got into art journaling and scrapbooking with paper and haven't looked back.

I'm thrilled to be with SFTIO because it's about me. II have had a very faulty memory over the last few years, and find that writing down the memories are important for me, and that's what SFTIO is all about. I've been published a few times, both in digital magazines, Log Your Memories' Scrap Your Real Life book and more recently a paper magazine, and am on a design team for one LSS. I am the blog coordinator for Creative Scrappers. And now I've started teaching local art journaling workshops. I have to say that the move to art journaling and traditional scrapbooking has been an exciting one. I'd have to describe my style as eclectic grunge. I adore texture paste and gesso, and love my white space. And if the paper has damask on it, I'm all in, baby! I've very honoured to be here and hope that you'll join me on this exciting journey!

Kiki's Blog: Toasted, Roasted and Ready to Serve

Nicole Martel

I am a wife and a mom of a 2 year old. Currently, I work for NASA Federal Credit Union, 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. When I’m not working, I am at home playing with my son and when he goes to bed at night, I scrap! I tend to have more of a simple/journalistic style. My favorite go-to supply is patterned paper because I can cut it up and use patterns as embellishments on my layouts. I like my layouts nice and neat, free of clutter.

Nicole's Blog: I'm Just a Simple Gal

Rita Barakat

Teen Program Coordinator

My name is Rita Barakat. I have been married to my wonderful hubby for 19 years. Before I had children I painted life size murals for a living. I am blessed to be a SAHM (stay at home mom) to five beautiful children ages 18 down to 4! My talents are all in the fine arts. I direct a youth choir and drama team. I sing and have always been a crafter and an artist. When I ran across scrapbooking I was immediately hooked! Scrapbooking is my passion.

I love being a part of Scrapbooking from the Inside Out! I love the process of journaling your emotions through scrapbooking; what a wonderful legacy we are leaving for future generations! I love that SFTIO gives us the opportunity to explore and express our feelings, I really enjoy hearing what everyone has to say and it's nice that we can be so honest. (WTG Rachel!) I am so excited to work with Rachel and the SFTIO team.

Rita's Blog: Let's Embellish

Kai Baldwin

Marketing Coordinator

Vertically challenged, blonde (most of the time), easy-going yet verbose scrapbooker seeks strong, bold, colorful and funky patterned paper for long-term, yet vulnerable and intimate love affair. I can’t stay away from a good line that coordinates well with other fun pals, especially “Chip” and “Tag”. I love to be adventurous with stamps and Stickles. Got flowers? If not, no worries, I do! I adhere to few rules and hope you like cutting and tearing it up as much as I do. If you’re ready to dig deep and expose your inner self with me, then you bring the bling and I’ll bring the ribbon and we can meet up for a sticky good time!

Whoops! How did my ScrapperMatch.com bio sneak into this one? Sorry! How embarrassing! Boy, is my face red. Let’s try this again…

Hi, my name is Kai. It’s pronounced K-eye or rhymes with tie, bye, hi, sigh… well, you get the picture. I currently reside in central Ohio, but only under duress. I'd much rather be "home" in western NY state. I started scrapbooking in 1999 after visiting a friend who had just attended a Creative Memories workshop. Looking at her completed page just sent little electrical impulses through me. I realized then that this was what I had been searching for. Prior to this day, I was a “craft nomad”, dabbling in a lot of different crafts. As a child I remember spending hours making my own cards, paper-storybooks, and collaged photo pages in those static-cling albums with hand-cut pieces of paper with journaling or quips on them. But I was never satisfied. I never realized what was missing until that day… when my friend’s scrapbook page opened my mind. I took a class and started to explore my own creativity. Years later, I started working part-time at the LSS where I had taken my first class and remain there today.

After a few years at the LSS, I again grew unhappy and disillusioned with scrapbooking. At this point in time I had only really had time to scrapbook two basic albums, a few gift items and handmade cards. I just felt unfulfilled. What I created didn't feel good enough, or just... enough. I considered quitting until a friend of mine pointed me here to SFTIO. I immediately realized that I had found my new home. Scrapbooking as a form of journaling, therapy, release, catalyst or just to share who I really am inside is where it’s at for me now. I will be forever thankful to Rachel for bringing her vision to life and I am very excited and humbled to be a part of it!

Kai's Blog: Enjoy the Ride Today

Paige Ramos

Special Projects Coordinator

Hi, I'm Paige. I live in Peoria, AZ but I was born and raised in NY. I've been married to my hunky husband for 17 years and we have A fabulous 12 year old son and 2 beautiful daughters, ages 8 and 10 who are typically the focus of my scrapbooking. By day I am a Reunion Coordinator as well as the Director of Collections for an internet travel consortium.  I'm a devoted soccer and swim team mom, AND when time allows I throw in a load or 19 of laundry and clean my house. When time doesn't allow, I watch “Once Upon A Time”, “Dancing with the Stars”, “Top Chef”  & “General Hospital” on my DVR.

When I grow up I want to be a professional writer and I'm currently practicing my craft on my blog "The Bumpy Ride." Although my life might sound like that of the average girl next door - trust me, IT'S NOT. The most bizarre (usually comical) things seem to happen to me and I love to write about them and share my insane experiences and observational humor.  So PLEASE take a peek...

I’m delighted to say that I’ve been working at Scrapbooking from the Inside Out since its inception and I’m so pleased with all of the lives that we’ve touched and how we’ve changed how a lot of people approach scrapbooking.  For me, SFTIO is important because I want my children to REALLY know and understand me. I also think that Inside Out LO’s will be a great gift for them to use to learn more about themselves and who they are as a part of our family and as individuals. By Scrapbooking from the Inside Out I am able to give them art and information about their heritage and their history, while at the same time sharing with them how very much they are loved and why. 

Scrapbooking in general allows me to satisfy the artist in my heart, and the writer in my soul. Endeavoring to do so from the Inside Out is a challenge and experience that I treasure and I'm sure you will too.

Paige's Blog:  The Bumpy Ride