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December 12, 2008

Scrapbooking with Amy

I’m really excited about my guest blogger today. I met Amy W online through our mutual love of books, reading and paranormal romances. She’s also a digital scrapbook designer and does the most amazing projects. Today she’s taking us through the basics of digital scrapbooking and also has a special surprise gift for us. I’ll leave you in Amy’s hands, and if you have any questions just ask them in the comments section.

Hello everyone my name is Amy W. You may have seen me here from time to time commenting on Shelley’s entertaining blog and begging her for more Middlemarch books (I love that series!). First off I want to thank Shelley for inviting me to guest blog, it’s my first time and a great honor. That being said I’m not a writer, just an avid reader, I am digital scrapbook designer. “What’s a digital scrapbook?” I know that question just popped into your head right now. If you are at all familiar with traditional paper scrapbooks, then know that digital is just a way of creating those same lovely scrapbook pages on a computer. And if you’re not familiar with them, then we make photos look really pretty.

Let’s talk about scrapbooking for a minute. People scrapbook to preserve memories in a special way. Rather than just putting photos into an album, a scrapbook page draws the viewer into the memory. These pages are rich with color, detail and wonderful journaling. Each page is a work of art lovingly created by a scrapbook artist. Every piece put on a page is carefully chosen to reflect the theme, colors and feeling of the photos and moment. They can be breathtaking to see when finished. I have seen pages that made me feel the fun and adventure of a 6 year olds birthday party, the sorrow of a loved one missing, the love shared by a couple at their wedding or their 50th anniversary and a parent’s pride on graduation day for their child. A scrapbook is filled with moments of time captured forever not just in a photo but in a one (or two) page story of visual richness.

Now let’s talk more specifically about digital scrapbooking. I chose to create digital scrapbooks versus paper scrapbooks for a few reasons that you may understand:

1. I don’t like cleaning up the mess after creating a page. Bits of paper and ribbon are everywhere. Plus have a small child who likes to get into things. It’s so much easier to just save a file, then to clean up and put away traditional materials.

2. I can reuse supplies and kits as many times as I want and I never run out of letters in an alphabet, just copy and paste the files over and over again.

3. I can resize, crop, change to black and white, sepia tone or reuse my digital photos however I choose and as often as I want.

4. Digital scrapbooks are more cost effective (cheaper) that traditional. There are many scrappers out there who create pages to share entirely for free.

5. The ease of which I can share my special memory with friends and family, either via the internet or with printed products.

Overall I believe digital scrapbooking is just easier than traditional. But I still on occasion like to play with stickers, glitter and ribbons, so I do some hybrid scrapping. Hybrid scrapbooking is where you combine traditional paper scrapbooking with digital. Print out a digital card or a gift box. Grab those stickers, bows, ribbons and glitter off the shelf and create a wonderful creation that uses both scrapping styles. There are a variety of programs that can be used to create digital scrapbooks and they run from free to expensive. There are also a tremendous number of designers giving away digital scrapbook supplies, or freebies, every day. You can also go into an online scrap shop and buy the perfect kit for your special occasion. (Please stop by mine and take a peek. digibydesign.com)

Now, since you’ve all read this far though my explanation of digital scrapbooking I’ve got a special treat for you. Here is a file with 3 Christmas Bragbook Goodies inside. Download it and you’ll find inside Christmas cards for you to print and create. We call them bragbooks because the 4×6 inch size is standard for photo prints and easy to show, share or simply brag about. The first bragbook is a simple card that you print and then fold to give to a loved one. If you want to jazz it up think about adding glitter, stickers or bows to it. The second project is called a quick page, for this one you’ll need a photo to put in the empty spot and you’re done…a quick scrap page. Both the card and quick page can easily be used with either MS Word or Outlook to print or share via email. Lastly is a digital layered template, or a jumpstart, for those of you who already know how to digitally scrapbook.

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You can download your Christmas Bragbook Goodies HERE.

Enjoy the goodies and have a Happy Holiday Season!
Amy W.

P.S. Don’t forget to take lots of pictures over the holidays so you can scrapbook them later!

19 Comments

  1. Fedora

    Very cute, Amy! I started physical scrapbooking a few years ago, meaning that I got tons of supplies and have a few half-finished scrapbooks :) It’s very time-consuming! I may have to give the digital scrapbooking a shot! We have a gazillion photos, but don’t do much with them right now…

  2. Jen

    Great Ideas! Happy Holidays! Jen :)

  3. Kimberley C

    I love the idea of scrapbooking – but I really don’t have anywhere to work (and I have 4 cats who think helping is to run thru the middle of whatever I am doing!)..So this digital scrapbooking looks very appealing!

    Merry Christmas & Happy New Year :grin:

  4. julia

    I’ve done real-world scrapbooking and I love to work with my photos on my computer. I haven’t done any digital scrapbooking yet, but working with my pictures always soothes and relaxes me. I could see some scrapping in my future…

  5. Vicky Cormier

    I love the scrapbooking idea. I don’t do it but my daughter does. She loves it and I get to see all of my granddaughters pictures in order. It is great.

  6. Amy W.

    Yay! I’m so glad you all like scrapbooks as much as I do. I love that Shelley asked me to guest blog today. If anyone wants the real scoop on digital scrapbooking the main hub is at DigiShopTalk. It’s a wonderful place to find out what’s the best programs are , where to get freebies and to find out about new designers and techniques.

    http://www.digishoptalk.com/

    Hugs,
    -Amy W.

  7. Shelley Munro

    I like the idea of no mess. That’s a big plus. How long does it take you to do a design, Amy? Something like the ones above?

  8. Cathy M

    What a fun idea, Amy, thanks for sharing it with us.

  9. Amy W.

    Shelley,
    It all depends on if you are inspired or not. I’ve had designs that take me only an hour or two and ones that have taken months to create. Kits take longer but creating a scrapbook page is usually between 1-4 hours for a really good one.
    Hugs,
    -Amy

  10. Shelley Munro

    Okay, sort of like writing then. Sometimes inspiration hits and other times it’s more difficult and even the ironing looks exciting. :grin:

  11. N.J. Walters

    What a fun idea. Thanks for sharing.

  12. Karin

    Thanks for sharing the bragbook goodies! It looks like a great idea and like it would be something fun to do with some of the pictures I have.

  13. Paz

    This is very cool!

    Paz

  14. Amy W.

    Woo-hoo it’s been fun guest blogging over here for the day. I feel like a star! It sounds like a lot of you would like to try out this whole digitalscrapbooking craze, it realy is a easy, mess free and low space (well it takes up hard drive space- LOL!) way to scrap. Feel free to send me any questions, you can find me on my blog or go to the vast pool of experts at DigiShopTalk.com there’s a whole slew of ladies more than ready to answer your questions and offer help! It’s been fun Shelley but I’m off to bed! Thanks for having me!
    Hugs,
    -Amy W.
    My blog: http://scrap-a-lot.blogspot.com/

  15. Christina Phillips

    What a great idea. My daughter keeps talking about scrapbooking, but she’s always working on the computer so I think this would be absolutely ideal for her! thanks so much for sharing, Amy!

  16. Judith

    Hi,
    I love the idea of scrapbooks too.
    I had never even considered the idea of Digital scrapbooks, perhaps that just shows that I am not as up to date as I like to think I am, sigh!
    Another thing we do is to buy and put away in perfect condition a newspaper on the day of a new birth in the family.

    Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

  17. Shelley Munro

    Judith – what a great idea with the newspaper. I’d never thought of doing that, although I have seen ads where you can buy newspapers from the day you were born. I don’t know if these are original newspapers or not. I suspect it would be hard to know for sure.

  18. Amy W.

    Oh how fun to keep the newspaper! Fabulous idea!

    There’s also an easy way to make a digital scrapbook without actually doing most of the hard work. At Shutterfly.com you can simply choose a theme digital album and insert your photos then add the text/journaling and viola! you have a scrapbook.
    Also digital pages take up a lot less space in the album as well. I have a 40 page scrap book of Emma’s first two years that’s only 3/4 inches thick. It’s a bound album that I had printed by Shutterfly.com Love that place, they printed our Christmas cards too!
    -Amy

  19. Lindsey Ekland

    This seems simpler than scrapbooking on paper. It is much easier to resize the photos or the font. Thank you for the interesting post.