What is the Cue Our Memory Card?
It's a compact aluminum print, the same size as a business card, featuring images and QR codes that connect you to an array of online content, including videos, galleries, travel logs, family recipes, playlists, songs, and virtually anything available on the internet.
I like to use these cards as markers for specific videos or reels capturing birthdays, vacations, and other important events or milestones. I store them in an album for convenient access when I want to revisit and relive those moments. All it takes is a quick scan with my phone, and I get to be transported back to those memories.
This Business Card Album has been my favorite way to store my cards. It's small, it fits in my crossbody bag and it's a very inexpensive option!
*This image includes an affiliate link where we may receive a small commission.
What Inspired the Creation of the Cue Our Memory Card?
The birth of the Cue Our Memory Card was sparked by various factors over time. However, its development was significantly shaped by these three pivotal moments:
- Marriage & Parenthood
- My Dad's Birthday
- A Burglary
Marriage & Parenthood
Marriage - My Wedding
Every year on my anniversary without fail, I can never find my wedding video or my wedding gallery! I would email myself the links, bookmark them on my phone and laptop, and I'm pretty sure I wrote it down in my journal on multiple occasions.
No matter how many times I saved, emailed, or wrote down these links, I just couldn't find them when I wanted them.
Bookmarks got buried beneath the other hundreds of bookmarks. Emails were lost despite adding "wedding" keywords in the email title. And my stack of journals somehow never went to the right page when I scanned them.
This made me wonder if there was a way for me to make these links more accessible and easier to locate!
Parenthood
My phone is overflowing with pictures and videos of my child. I'm obsessed, there's no better way to say it! He's finally to the age that we can sign him up for parks and recreation sports. His first team sport was tee-ball and it was rough!
Still, I would like to remember it and be able to bring it up for others to see from time to time. Plus, they had team pictures and individuals and I was pleasantly surprised at the prices for prints. We ordered more than we needed but we couldn't help ourselves.
Soccer season was much more fun than tee-ball. I had a thought to make a 5"x7" aluminum print with his soccer picture and a QR code for a video montage. Immediately after that thought, I wondered "was I going to make one of these every time he played a season?". That thought alone ruled it out for me. I would run out of wall space and if it wasn't on the wall then it would likely get lost in storage.
My Dad's Birthday
My Dad's Birthday was coming up and I wanted to make him something with sentimental value.
After brainstorming and thinking about different things I could make, I finally came to the conclusion that I was going to make a plaque of sorts.
I rummaged through old photos, compiled a playlist of songs that we grew up listening to with my dad, and got the idea to link some videos to the photos I had.
This all accumulated into the very first metal print with QR Codes that I have ever ventured to make!
It is an 8"x12" aluminum print with a gloss finish. I loved it because it was interactive layered with a bit of surprise, because you didn't know what would pop up with each QR code.
I call it a Mixtape Plaque because every link is for a song or a playlist. Here's a close-up on some of the codes.
And finally...
A Burglary
Following my dad's birthday, I made a plaque for my mom (my dad's birthday is the same week as Mother's Day). It was the same size with a short clip I had made for her in honor of Mother's Day. She loved it!
My mom is a bit of a traveler and would always keep the plaque in her backpack (which was easy since it's about the same size as a piece of paper).
A few weeks pass and she's at home. She was tired after a long drive and left her bag out in the car. In the middle of the night, she woke up to the sound of car alarms (she lived in a condo in Northern California and parks in a parking structure that could be seen from her living room).
2 men had broken the windows of my brother's truck (my mom and brother swapped cars for the weekend) and were stealing his tools (he worked in cabinetry). She immediately called 9-1-1 and had run out there.
Long story short, they had taken everything. The police never caught them. She was devastated, to say the least.
Alone, she cleared the burglars' mess, hoping to find her plaque in the truck (she figured it'd be safe since it's not something you could pawn off to anyone). Unfortunately, it was also taken. She was just looking for something positive to help brighten her situation.
This was a moment that also led to the development of the Cue Our Memory Card with emphasis on sizing. In this moment, I wanted to make something smaller, and even more portable that could always be kept on your person!
| All of these events together led me to the Cue Our Memory Card. |
The Mixtape Plaque was the first physical product I had ever made that utilized QR codes and inspired a line of thinking in me, that would ultimately be the basis of the Cue Our Memory Card. That being, with QR codes, I could expand a picture into a video & audio experience.
This along with wanting to preserve milestones and memories with my family and talking to my mom in the aftermath of being robbed pushed me to want to make something that was:
- Portable
- Small
- Able to have a QR code that is linked to a significant audio or visual file
- Easy to store and
- Easy to recognize (i.e. just by looking at it, you know without scanning that it's for a birthday or a wedding, etc.)
Hence, the Cue Our Memory Card was born!
These are some of the first cards I drafted. My mom carries her card in her wallet wherever she goes. I keep my wedding card in the first sleeve of my album (I've watched my wedding video more in the past month than I have the entire 5 years of my marriage!). And my son's parks & rec card is nestled in my album along with other cards I've made for his birthday, first day of school and Halloween.
It brings me so much joy to be able to access these memories with a simple scan. It also saves me from the headache of searching through different social apps trying to figure out which one had a certain video or picture.
I am so excited to document and preserve our family milestones with these cards! And hey, maybe you will be too 
With Love,
Terina F.