Meet CWEnder Emma Hand

This is another in a series of posts about creative Central West Enders, this one to introduce you to the fabulous Emma Hand. Emma and her husband Carter (who's pictured on the wall above) live in the CWE with their two young daughters. A couple of years ago Emma created a business called Snap Stories, which this entrepreneur is quick to say "falls into the slightly no brainer category." Simple, yes, but thinking of that "no brainer" and actually getting it to market requires a whole different skill set.

A little background on the subject: Emma grew up in the Tower Grove neighborhood and attended the CWE's Rosati Kain where she fell in love with the neighborhood. She earned a biology degree from Boston University and, tired of the cold winters, moved to southern California to work in biotech sales. While in San Diego she met Carter, a California native.

The couple moved north to San Francisco where Emma took a job at Sunset Magazine doing online marketing and partnership building. Fed by the creative energy at the magazine, she moonlighted making stickers and took them to trade shows where she was asked if she had other products for sale. The contacts she made then came in handy when she was ready to produce Snap Stories. 

When Emma realized she missed home and her family, she persuaded Carter to move to St. Louis and give it a try. They bought a charming house on a CWE street that's populated by other young families. As we sat on the Hands' front porch the afternoon I visited, a neighbor and her three children walked to their house a few doors away.  As the young mothers exchanged greetings, it reminded me of the enduring friendships our family found on Lenox Place and the neighboring streets when our children were growing up.

For years Emma was complimented on her handwriting and handmade cards. When the Hands' friends had children, this clever mother would paste pictures of the new baby in old picture books and give them as gifts. Putting the two ideas together she created Snap Stories, shown above, an extremely easy way for children and adults to get favorite photos into a story.

As Emma and I arranged her products for the photograph above, I noticed that a "pro/con" notepad on her desk has nothing written on the negative side—entirely appropriate for her creation. Emma's catchy tagline for Snap Stories is "there is no mess…just peel and press." Watch a video of Emma showing just how easy Snap Stories are right here. For people like me who love looking at beautiful scrapbooking papers and embellishments but can't imagine taking the time to actually create one, these books are a quick way to get some of our photos out of storage boxes and into use.

I chose the "My Great Adventure" book and found it to be just about perfect for my short attention span. The most difficult part was choosing which photographs to feature—each book holds ten. "My Great Adventure" shows our children at a sand castle contest on Long Island sponsored by the late magazine, Child, and in the slot to the right, middle son Andrew casting his line into the Atlantic. There are three other titles, "My Baby Face," "Hip Hooray It's Your Birthday," and "Go Go Girlfriends," $12. 

Snap Stories are available locally at  Left Bank Books and Cassie's, or you can order them through Emma & Company here—free shipping if you use the magic words  "nickisdiscount."