Digital Scrapbooking

I am excited to finally post about my new hobby - Digital Scrapbooking. I have put the paper cutter, corner rounder, and photo splits away and am now going to scrapbook completely on the computer. Now, I am not trying to convert anyone. I understand a women's need to craft. I, myself, come from a long line of crafters. Sometimes you just crave the feel of cardstock in your hand and the sound of an eyelet being hammered. That's why I am keeping my card making hobby alive and strong. But I absolutely love, love, LOVE to be on the computer, so I am really excited to do all my picture stuff there. No more developing pictures and having a big mess on the table (or my bed where I used to do it).

I had to include a lot of my sample pages in this post. They're all from 2006. I don't get a lot of people banging on my door begging to look through my pictures, so now I'm forcing them on you. I am not the most creative scrapbooker, but I like it simple. My main goals are 1) To have the focus be on the pictures, not on all the decoration or embellishment. And 2) To fit as many pictures on a page as possible while still having it look pleasant. My mother is a picture taking FANATIC! And while I grew up rolling my eyes at the whole roll of film wasted on one picture of the family in front of the Christmas tree, I have come full circle and also take a ton of pictures. I am so lucky to live in the age of digital cameras so I don't have to pay for film or develop every picture!

So I like to include a lot of pictures on a page. Do I want to use the picture of Jude with a closed mouth smirk, or the one with an open mouth grin? I don't have to decided! I use them both! What's great about digital scrapbooking, too, is that a 4x6 picture doesn't have to be 4x6. You can crop it and shrink it to whatever size you want, and that's why you're able to fit more on a page.

So that's what I'm really excited about now. Now you can print off 12x12 pages at Sam's Club or Costco and put them in a scrapbook. Or Heritage Makers will print them in a bound book for a little more. The one bad thing about going digital is that I feel I've betrayed a whole generation - my generation - of avid scrapbookers. I used to be one of them. And they all know it. And they all invite me to scrapbooking night or try and sell me their stuff from their scrapbooking party. I just make excuses because I can't bear to tell them the truth. That I've gone to the other side. To each their own....but digital scrapbooking is the best!

(The pictures and words on these scrapbook pages are blurry because I had to shrink the file so I could post them all here. But normally they're crystal clear and not pixelated at all!)