Digital Scrapbooking Questions

A number of people both on blogger and off have asked me questions about digital scrapbooking, so I'll do what my dear friend Emily did for me a long time ago, and try to tell a bit about it, and hopefully get someone off and running, as she got me! The loveliest thing about digital scrapbooking is that you don't have the mess! You can amass an enormous amount of digital materials that all fit in your computer! Everything that is made 'for real' is also made digitally. Stickers, paper, cardboard, acrylic, glitter, brads, frames, everything. You can either spend money to get your stuff (faster--immediate gratification!) or more slowly get it for free.

First, the software: Personally, I couldn't afford Adobe Photoshop, so I've learned how to use Gimp. Gimp is set up much like Photoshop, but it's free! And I am all about free. At www.gimp.org, you can download the program for nothing. Not bad compared to the hundreds you'll pay for Photoshop. I have absolutely nothing against Photoshop, I just couldn't afford it, and now I've crested the learning curve for Gimp, and probably wouldn't want it anyway.

And there is a learning curve! So many things took me forever to figure out. There are a couple sites out there with Gimp tutorials, but that is one of the down sides of Gimp. There is far less educational material out there for it than there is for Photoshop. http://www.scrapbooksgonedigital.com/TUTORIALS/ is where you can find some educational materials about how to do scrapbooking stuff in Gimp. Plus, you can email them with questions!

Okay, here's the deal: if you want some crazy information on sites to find free digital scrapbooking materials, leave a comment with your email, and I'll send you a giant list! (It's too much to put here on the blog!) This way I'm not forcing information at people who don't want it!

Obviously, the point of having scrapbooks is that you can look at the finished products. Now, I just started digital scrapbooking about 2 years ago, and finished Leiden's baby book the old fashioned way. Mac's baby book will be the first to be completed digitally. Then I'll have baby #3 to work on, and then I've got to catch up on all the other family stuff! Exhausting. I've already looked at a couple sites that print out your pages, though. Many sites will create an entire book for you, cover included, but I was looking for a site that did loose pages. I am looking at two right now for consideration of Mac's book. www.viovio.com and www.mypictales.com . Viovio prints loose pages back to back--one sheet (2 layouts, one on the front, with one on the back) for something like $.89, but their minimum order for loose sheets is 24 pages. (12 sheets of paper) where mypictales doesn't print back to back.

Anyway, there's a bunch of info for anyone interested, and remember, if you want to know more, comment with your email and I'll send you some freebie info.