Winner of Digital Scrapbook Artist by Serif

I used the technical method of throwing the names in a bowl and adding the ones who stumbled twice.

Then youngest son was selected to pick a winner.

And the winner is….

Bonnie

Bonnie email me at lrlwreath at gmail dot com to give me your snail mail address of where to send your new computer program.  I am excited for you and can not wait to see what you design!

Digital Scrapbooking, How To Get Started-UPDATED for an announcement.

UPDATED: For anyone who has not had a chance to try digital scrapbooking, but would love to get their feet wet I am going to be offering a giveaway later this week. STAY TUNED!!

All About MeMany of you have mentioned that you love seeing all the different digital layouts, but you don’t know where to begin.  So I thought I would write this post for when people ask How do I begin digital scrapbooking?.”

1. You need to make sure you have enough storage on your computer or have an external hard drive to store everything. Many digital scrapbook pages are large files especially if you want to print them out for an album.

2. One thing I found out is not only is storage important but so is RAM, RAM is what makes things run a bit faster. Once I upgraded my RAM I did not have to wait 10 minutes between each thing I did.

3. Software: you need the right software to be able to do the digital layouts. To list a few:

    A.The big time graphic artists use Adobe Photoshop (I have not graduated to this, because it is so expensive, but it is on my “want” list).
    B. Adobe Photoshop ElementsHarmony In Autumn
    C. Corel Paint Shop Pro X2
    – I have not used this personally but I have heard many good things about it.
    D.Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9.0
    E. ACDSee Photo Software
    F.GIMP (which I believe is free
    G.Online Program

4. Once you have enough computer storage and the right software, now you need to either load or scan photos into your computer.

(I only have experience with Photoshop Elements 6.0 & 5.0, so I can not personally vouch for the others. Well except Adobe Photoshop….I know that is good =)

5. Now the fun begins!!

TootsieBelow is a list of sites that have great tutorials (both on the software programs & how to begin scrapping) and also offer freebies to get you started. I warn you it is addicting and fun. This list is far from inclusive, if you google “digital scrapbooking” you will get a nice list of other sites as well, these are just ones I have had experience with.

    SDK (they give away a free kit every month in their treasure hunt)
    Gotta Pixel (Getting Start Place)
    DST (this is where all the designers hang out, and you can see a bunch of freebies announced in their forum)
    Scrap Artist (they have a freebie section)
    Misty Cato has excellent tutorials on her blog.
    Hummie’s World is EXCELLENT for tutorials
    Shabby Princess
    Peppermint Creative (usually have a free kit download a month)
    Digital Freebies
    Fun and Free

5. Once you learn how to make and save your pages. Shutterfly offers photo books for you to upload and have printed out. You can also print out the pages yourself and make your own book. The options are endless. Hopefully for anyone who did not know where to begin this gives you the right direction. If you have any questions I can try to answer them for you, or possibly my friend Iris can help you also (she is an expert scrapper!)

My BoysThen when you want to get really good you can begin lurking on sites like Just Creative Design.  If you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, once you get the hang of things, you can start to make some really cool stuff.  Speaking of Jacob, he is offering some REALLY COOL PRIZES on his site right now, you don’t even need to be a designer to want some of this stuff.  But I have to tell you that camera makes me drool. And your probably figured it out but digital scrapbooking leads to photography, but that is whole other post.  Check out Jacob’s site to enter some of the neat give aways he is having and let me know if you decide to begin digital scapbooking!

Beach Runaway


(click on picture for a bigger image)

I want to thank you so much for all the comments you made concerning my rambling post. I can not begin to tell you how God used your comments to speak to me. I did run away to the beach on Sunday, it calmed and refreshed me. But boy am I red….sometimes I have no brain because I went to the beach on the fly and forgot sunscreen. Just call me tomato =)