It’s no secret I love to scrapbook. I go on those scrapbooking retreat weekends a couple times a year where my girlfriends and I sit in a conference room full of women and scrapbook like crazy for 3 days straight.
But I recently went through a dry spell. I felt like I was making the same scrapbook layout over and over. The creative juices weren’t flowing. I was focused on just “getting my 2007 book done” and not putting much care into the pages. So, for a change of pace, I tried digital scrapbooking.
At first I loved it. There’s an abundance of resources, papers, embellishments, and fonts online – many of them free – which made it easy to try out various layouts and discard what didn’t work for me. I’d open up Photoshop and play around with my photos for hours, spending way too much time creating the perfect page.
But it was fun and I was feeling creative again. I scrapbooked all of my 2008 photos digitally and had a book printed by Shutterfly, but when I got it, I was disappointed. Nothing against Shutterfly — they made it simple to create the book and the quality was excellent. I was disappointed in the flatness of the book. No pretty stickers, brads, or ribbons. Nothing that made my pages “pop.” While I felt creative in Photoshop, the creativity didn’t translate to those printed scrapbook pages.
Now I’m back to scrapbooking with real paper and supplies. I’m also stoking my creativity with a terrific book called BetterPhoto Basics: The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Taking Photos Like a Pro. This book is sorta like the Cliff notes version of that boring manual that comes with your camera. It gives you clear, concise instructions that you can immediately implement to take better pictures, no matter what kind of camera you have. There are also more advanced techniques and “secrets” from the pros — all presented in easy-to-read bites. And it’s a beautiful book – the photos that accompany each tip are stunning. I’m getting a lot of inspiration.
Because, really, aren’t these cuties worth scrapbooks full of gorgeous photos?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: personalised
June 18, 2010 at 6:41 am
My wife does a lot of scrapbooking, but I had never really seen the point of spending so much time cutting up perfectly good photos. Now she has got me into the online side of photo editing and I absolutely love it. I have all my family photos in about a million albums on my computer and on the web.. it’s nice to be able to see them every day and not have to deal with cutting them up and storing all of the scrap books!
Twitter: shannonentin
June 18, 2010 at 7:01 am
Hi Rusty, thanks for your comment. That’s very true. I also worry a bit now and then about losing my scrapbooks if some tragedy should happen to my home. I just happen to love the cutting, matting, arranging, and embellishing of photos on pretty paper. I once tried scanning my finished pages to keep them on a hard drive, but that quickly got WAY too tedious.
Twitter: knzus
July 3, 2010 at 9:32 am
You should try Scrapbook MAX! (I’m a designer there.) It’s digital scrapbooking software. I had never scrapped before in my life and ran across it one day while looking for printables, tried it and was hooked. I do everything digital now for scrapping projects… and can print them out like real scrapbooks, but no mess or inventory to keep. I save all my projects to flash drive (and then put them in our safe so I can go back and use them again or re-print, whatever). SBM has an awesome store with very reasonable prices, plus in the various forums there are a jillion freebies for the taking, more added almost every day! (http://scrapbookmax.com)
Wow, didn’t mean to sound like an ad, LOL!
Visiting from SITS! Hope you have an awesome day! :-)
Diana´s last blog ..blog-aversary month
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Enjoy your new adventures.
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