Diving into Digital Scrapbooking

This has got to be one of the coolest things I have come across in FOREVER! I'm so pumped about it I don't know what to do! I think this could still fall under my scrapbooking hobby. I've made a commitment to not start any more hobbies, but if I'm exchanging one, it should be fine!

When I was talking to Big P (hubby) the other night about it, he asked me "what is the ultimate goal in scrapbooking anyway?" I answered "to get it done". He agreed and summed it up like this - as long as we can enjoy it as a family and you have fun doing it, who cares what means you take to get there. I couldn't agree more!

I think that there could be many advantages to this way of scrapbooking for me. I realize that this is definitely not the way for everyone, but so far, I've decided to dive in head first. Tanya for instance, would never do it this way, but she most definitely agreed that it was something for me.

Some friends that I met through my great friend, Tanya, showed me how to digi-scrap on Friday night. After talking to Big P about it, he reminded me that at one time I said "that's not real scrapbooking". Phooeee on me!

My laptop has become a great resource for me. I do most everything on this baby! I plan our homeschool time, meet friends, write, share, upload photos, and will now be adding to that repertoire scrapbooking.

Here are the advantages I see:

• Cost - SERIOUS cost savings. There are so many freebies on the web for digital papers, stickers, fonts, photo templates, blah, blah, blah, that unless I was looking for something very specific, I would never need another piece of scrapbooking equipment again. After purchasing software, the only consumable items that you need to purchase are albums to put your pages in and then your pages, which you can print at costco VERY inexpensively. and if you did want to purchase something specific, the prices for digi-items are pennies on the dollar for traditional supplies. You can easily get an entire kit of items that are never consumable - 10 different papers, eyelets, brads, letters, die cuts, embellishments of all sorts for about $8 for the ENTIRE KIT. Much less than that many times.
• Time - I think that once you know what you are doing, you could easily put a 2 page layout together in a matter of minutes.
• Space - although I have downgraded all of my scrapbooking stuff in the last couple of years, it still takes up a lot of space. I could easily sell off my scrapbook stuff and give away most of it and go to the space that my computer and our time capsule or external hard drives takes up.
• Portability - can you imagine being able to pick up and scrapbook at a moments notice???
• Organization - this probably falls under space as well, but I have a serious NEED to have things organized. It makes my brain work in such a productive way. Organizing my scrapbook stuff has always been an issue for me, but keeping things organized on my computer is such a manageable task.
  

Big P was already planning to purchase the software to design our new family webpage - www.salinascountry.com.

Here is a link for a free ebook on how to get started with digital scrapbooking. I'll also share some links that Anna and Naomi shared with me.

Freebie templates and scrapbooking kits:


15 Things You Need to Know to Become a Digital Scrapbooker

This is from www.scrapgirls.com

http://ikeagoddess.blogspot.com - this scrapper compiles links to several freebies all in one place each day!

http://simplyyin.blogspot.com/ - lots of templates for arranging your photos on your digi-page.

www.shabbyprincess.com - way beautiful scrapbooking papers for free

http://raspberryroaddesigns.blogspot.com/ - things to purchase and TONS of beautiful freebies