Unfortunately, this week has not afforded me any time for scrapbooking.
With no new layouts to share for Scrapbook Saturday I thought I would share a little about how I began with digital scrapbooking.
When I was pregnant with EA and MC many of my friends were avid paper scrapbookers. I remember envying the all night crops they went to together and raved about.
I was still doubtful, though, about scrapping myself, even though I knew I would want to preserve memories of my babies.
One of my friends gave me a pre-made scrapbook album as a baby shower gift. Because she ran out of time before my girls were born early, though, she only made one for EA.
I could never bring myself to put pictures into this album without a matching one for MC.
And I knew I could not match the quality of this beautiful album myself.
Then when my girls were close to a year old I began to see some things about online or digital scrapbooking. My interest was peaked.
About this same time I joined a group of online friends who also had twins the same age as my babies in doing a circle journal.
I attempted my first page of the circle journal with paper scrapping.
In doing so I realized that I would never be a paper scrapbooker. For that one two-page layout, I spent tons of money, time and frustration and still wasn’t pleased with the results.
So, I began looking into digital scrapbooking more.
I quickly found Digital Scrapbooking Place and began to read some of their tutorials and recommendations for getting started. I ordered a very limited scrapbooking software to begin.
As I did my first few pages, I really enjoyed the process and knew that this would be a long-term hobby.
When my husband came home on his mid-tour leave from Iraq, we went on a shopping trip and I purchased Photoshop Elements 4. After I opened the box and installed the software I became completely overwhelmed, not knowing where to begin.
After several failed attempts and much frustration, I promptly uninstalled Elements and put it back in the box where it stayed for the next six months!
Again I got the desire to figure this thing out, so I started searching for more tutorials to get me started.
I found the Scrap Girls website and purchased Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed: Photoshop Elements. These downloadable video tutorials got me started and I haven’t looked back since!
My biggest advice to anyone wanting to scrapbook digitally is to invest the time and resources in learning how to do the basics of your software. Once you’ve mastered this, it’s pretty easy to find and learn more tricks.
Here are some of the first scrapbook layouts I did.
Credits: Softly Sweetly Kit in the August (2006) Club Digital at DSP
Credits: Modern Princess page kit
Stitched With Love Loopy Tension Stitch
Credits: Summer Beauty Kit by Angie Svoboda
DSP Welcome Kit (brad and staple elements)
Sweet Hearts Brushes
Boy, have I ever learned a lot since then!!!
Kristi says
So do you print them out somehow and save them in an album? If so what service do you use and how much does it cost?