Creative With Photos {Digi-Scrapping}

Please welcome Erica McKnight! She is the proud mama of one sweet girl, and creative queen of digital scrapbooking. I’ve asked Erica to join in today, to give me a better insight into the world of digi-scrapping (and perhaps help someone else along who is interested, but wants to learn more)!

I was so excited, and honored, when Angie asked me to write a guest column about my latest obsession – digital scrapbooking. It’s a hobby that I’ve become completely addicted to and can’t wait to share it with all of you!

Just over three years ago, when my husband and I got married, we asked a close family friend to be our photographer. She gave us all the digital images that she took that day, but I didn’t have an album to put them in. I had heard about digital scrapbooking, but at the time, only knew of HeritageMakers.com and similar sites. I ended up making an album that I love through their program, as well as a few other cute little albums and products (including a cute calendar).

Eventually, though, I found their program to be more and more costly. My sister, Melanie, and I talked about finding a cheaper, easier way to digitally scrap our photos. Melanie had some friends who were already using Photoshop to scrap, and she learned from them. She taught me the ropes last summer, right after my daughter, Emily, was born.

Since then I’ve been hooked! I even entered a contest in May at my favorite site: ScrapMatters.com. The idea was to scrap and upload as many layouts as possible during the month of May. From the top ten posters, a winner would be chosen as Queen of Scrap. 140 layouts, a neglected family, many late nights, and one sore “scrap arm” later, I won the whole challenge! It was so exciting!

My daughter is absolutely my inspiration for all the layouts I do. Every once in a while I’ll throw in a picture of just my husband and I, or old pictures of me and my sisters together, but the majority of the pages I work on revolve around the life of my little one-year-old. She’s just the cutest thing ever – I can’t help myself! (The layouts in this article are all some of my favorites she’s inspired.)

So how can you get started with digital scrapbooking?

First of all, the best tip I can give you is to LEARN your PROGRAM! Whether you’re using Photoshop Elements, CS3, or any other photo editing program, learn to use it! There are a lot of great sites with free tutorials that will help get you started. Ask around at scrapbooking sites for tips and pointers. Most forums have threads devoted to answering questions. Even the most “advanced” scrapper can always learn something new!

Next, there are so many sites you can go to for inspiration. I’ll give you an idea of what you’ll get at some of the more popular scrapbooking sites, and the ones I stalk most often.

ScrapMatters – this site has a lot of great challenges throughout the month that keep you scrapping new things and moving out of your comfort zone. They also pride themselves in being one of the most supportive sites out there. Meaning, if you upload a layout to their site, you’re sure to get some positive feedback, which always makes you feel good!

digishoptalk – just about every time you refresh the page in the Layouts Gallery, you’ll see 16 new layouts. People upload to this site like crazy, so it’s a really great place to go for inspiration. You can look at what other people have done and “steal” their ideas! Just add the layouts you like to your “favorites” so you can go back and browse and get inspired!

digiscrapaddicts – another great site for inspiration, you’ll also get a few more comments on your layouts here, and they have some fun challenges and contests as well. About once a year they host a designer challenge, which generally means 4-5 weeks worth of free downloads from the competing designers! There are so many others, which you’ll soon find as soon as you get started!

• Most sites also have stores, filled with amazing, huge kits made by many very talented designers. If you’re just starting, and don’t want to spend a ton of money, there are ways to keep your digi-scrapping budget low.

• First, wait for sales. Many sites have regular sales throughout the month.

• Look for grab bags. From time to time a site will have a bunch of “designer grab bags” that each designer will make up, filled with up to $15 of mystery products, but priced for around $3 for the whole “bag”.

• Finally, find freebies! You can be choosy about freebies, but there are lots of great places to find them. The best places to look are at the IkeaGoddess or DigiFree. They’ll tell you where to go to find great free kits – sometimes over a four week period you can collect all the parts to one giant, free kit! I’ve gotten some amazing freebies this way.

• You can get free fonts to install too. Some of the best handwriting fonts are at Kevin & Amanda’s blog. Almost any other font you may be looking for can be found at dafont.

This seems like a lot of information to take in at once, but as soon as you get started, you’ll find you really love digital scrapbooking! I hope I’ve inspired a new group of digi-scrappers! It really is fun, and once you try it out, it’s SO addicting! I can’t wait to see more scrappers around my favorite forums!