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The Digital Scrapbook Advantage

Posted on June 18th, 2009 by admin in Scrapbooking Tutorials
Wesley Skiles posted:


Digital Scrapbooking is becoming very popular. It is a way to share photos with friends and family, that allows for creativity just as in traditional scrapbooking and plays into the technology driven world that we live in. Digital scrapbooking is becoming increasing popular among traditional scrapbookers and newbie scrapbookers due to the increased quality, decreased expense and mess as well as the ability to share final projects easily with others.

One of the obvious benefits of digital scrapbooking to the traditional scrapbooking is the physical mess that it does not create. With traditional scrapbooking, creators have to either have enough space in their home to leave their supplies and tools out or have enough storage space and containers. Problems arise with both, potentially dangerous tools lying around for children to get into and the hassle of putting everything in or out of storage mid-project are obvious deterrents. The other important thing to mention is the physical clean up. As many scrapbookers know, getting into a project provides an easy distraction from noticing the paper clippings and pieces of string, buttons and items spreading across the work area. Digital scrapbooking also minimizes the work area, to a computer screen.

The next great thing about digital scrapbooking is the cost, or lack there of. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on digital scrapbooking if you want, but you do not have to. The first money saving aspect is that of tools and supplies. There are many scrapbookers that have endless tubs of tools, cutting devices, hole punchers, rubber stamps, ink pads, paper supply, ribbon, buttons, pins, stickers and the list goes on. The supplies for digital scrapbooking can often times be found online for free or created with graphic and photo software. The biggest cost of digital scrapbooking is usually related to finding a computer program to use. Photo programs can run from $50-300, but many provide free downloadable trials so you can be certain of your investment. One could run into a some expenses when it comes to equipment like digital cameras, scanners and printers, but most people are likely to already own most of this equipment.

One of the best things about digital scrapbooks is just that, it’s digital. The digital platform allows corrections and additions to be made easily. How easy is it to physically change an actual hand-made scrapbook page, its not. In fact, attempting to do so may ruin the page all together, wasting a lot of time and resources. Digital scrapbooks are also extremely popular because of their ’share-ability’ (is that a word?). The satisfaction in scrapbooking in two-fold: seeing the final product and sharing the final product. You can share your scrapbook with all those around you. With digital scrapbooks, you can share with those around the world. Have family members living cross country, or grandparents that can get enough details about their grandchildren? You wouldn’t want to risk mailing your piece of art to them.

As mentioned a minute ago, one of the greatest things about scrapbooking, is being able to see it in completion. To have something physical that looks good, is personal and gives you a sense of accomplishment. Digital scrapbooks do not take this away. There are many websites, scrapbooking companies and even photo labs that can print your pages or even an entire book, printed & bound.

Digital scrapbooking provides many of the perks of traditional scrapbooking but with added ease, lower cost, with just as much of a creative outlet. It also has many benefits that traditional scrapbooking does not have, making it the choice for many. If you are looking for a project that is enjoyable to build, personal and fun to share, digital scrapbooking may be for you.



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The Web is Full of Free Scrapbook Supplies

Posted on June 9th, 2009 by admin in Scrapbook Software Tips, Scrapbooking Tutorials

Because there are so many Web-savvy scrapbooking image designers today, you can find plenty of free digital scrapbooking designs online. That means all you need to know is how to do a Web search and download files and you can have an almost endless supply of designs to create professional-looking scrapbooks. That’s why famous artist Mary Englebreit recently remarked that the Web is so overflowing with terrific free digital scrapbooking materials, it can provide almost any type of images you might need. And she should know about good images; products carrying her graphics sell like crazy!

The following are samples of some of the types of free scrapbooking graphics I’ve found on the Internet:

Vintage

There seems to be an upsurge in the number of people looking for antique scrapbooking images. Maybe that’s because antique art is so timeless and doesn’t date the final product to any particular modern era. Antique cards make wonderful vintage scrapbook embellishments, as does antique clipart. And if you’re lucky enough to find vintage designs on digital scrapbook papers, you’ll experience digital meeting traditional in a beautiful and useful way. Vintage graphics also cover a wide variety of subjects, including images as diverse as vintage airline posters, vintage flower embellishments, tall sailing ships,  magician posters and Victorian fashion illustrations. So whatever subject you’re trying to cover in your scrapbook, there’s probably vintage art to match.

Holidays

Holidays are great subjects for scrapbooks, since those are the occasions when many of us create some of our most lasting memories. And it’s not just the “showier” holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day and Halloween that inspire scrapbooks; it’s the minor holidays too. There are all kinds of patriotic scrapbooking papers and embellishments on the Web for holidays such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Fourth of July and Flag Day. There are also images suitable for Earth Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and just about any other holiday you can think of; even the silly or off-beat ones.

Butterflies and Flowers

I’ve definitely noticed that scrapbookers love flowers, and why not? They’re appropriate for almost any occasion. Butterflies, too, have a large audience, because they bring to mind so many things we love: freedom, summertime and other happy things. Butterfly and flower images are also diverse, because an abundance of them can be found as both illustrations and photos, and in modern and vintage styles. There are even  butterfly scrapbook embellishments that have coordinating modern and vintage designs available in the same collections.

Weddings

Scrapbooks and weddings are a natural combination, because wedding photo albums have always been traditional anyway. But a wedding scrapbook can preserve your memories in an even more creative way. There are many good free wedding scrapbooking images on the Web that will allow you to create one of these very special mementos with no or little cost. And if you can’t find any specifically for weddings, flower images would also be a great choice.

Babies

Like weddings, tiny tots invite photography. And what scrapbooker wouldn’t want to pass down a distinctive baby scrapbook to her child as he or she gets older? Fortunately, you can find a huge selection of scrapbooking designs for babies. If you haven’t looked at baby images for a while, though, you might be surprised to learn that the colors are less traditional than they used to be. Chocolate brown, burnt orange and red are popular, as are various shades of green. Blue and pink are still popular, of course, it’s just that you can find a lot of bolder color choices too.

So the next time you go looking for scrapbooking materials, check out what’s available on the Internet. You might be pleasantly surprised at the free images you’ll find.

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Use Free Clip Art and Scrapbooking Supplies to Help You Design a Fun and cost-effective Baby Shower

Posted on June 5th, 2009 by admin in Scrapbook Software Tips, Scrapbooking Tutorials

Even though the economy isn’t great right now, people are just as interested as ever in being able to throw great baby showers for their friends. The trick to doing this in a slow economy is to save money in areas that won’t be noticed. There’s no reason that can’t begin with the baby shower invitations and move right on through the shower decorations and the scrapbooks created after the fact.

One of the means to do that is to find good baby shower graphics. Often you can find very nice free images online. Just search for “free baby shower clip art,” plus the type of image you want. For instance, if you’d like pink baby girl clip art, enter those words or some variation of them in the search box. The same will work with virtually any theme you can think of, although the more obscure the concept, the less likely it will be that you’ll get enough good search results. If you’re lucky enough to find high resolution art when you search, you’ll open up more options for using it. That’s because that you need high-resolution images for print pieces, such as invitations or decorations. You certainly wouldn’t want to use low-resolution clipart because the end result won’t be clear. That would never do for a baby shower invitation, thank you card or decorations.

But clipart isn’t the only baby art resource you can find free online. You can also find many sites online that offer baby scrapbook paper. A number of good designers give away no-charge versions of their baby shower scrapbook page layouts to promote scrapbooking designs they sell or to get people to come to pages that have advertising. Either of these models give them a financial incentive to offer scrapbooking paper and embellishment freebies. Either way, the new mom wins! There are almost as many baby scrapbook themes as there are stars in the universe, so that means you’ll probably be able to make shower invitations and decorations from them if you can’t find suitable clip art. Themes range from fun to vintage and retro to luxurious. In case you didn’t know, retro is particularly popular right now, so you might want to try searching for free vintage baby scrapbook embellishments. A mom-to-be who is into that kind of art would probably be thrilled to have that as her baby shower theme!

Remember, these free baby shower clip art images, scrapbook papers and embellishments can obviously also be used to document the baby shower in a baby shower scrapbook that would make an excellent gift for the mother-to-be. That means any image searching you do will pay off in more ways than one, giving the new mom a baby shower she’ll remember forever.

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