Digital Scrapbooking Now

A fun online scrapbook and photo book making site is Picaboo. Just upload your digital photos and make your custom photo book. Choose from a variety of beautiful binders and they have lay flat albums that are neat and slim. You can completely customize your book with a few clicks.

This is a great service for anyone who isn’t technical – no hard-to-understand software. No tutorials to study. Just go to the site and use their help and tools. Use custom backgrounds from your own digital images or select pre-loaded backgrounds for your pages. There is even a background community – other people’s images are available for you to use!

You can customize your book further by adding comments, names, years and journaling with text boxes. There are layouts for you to use as a guide to make your scrapbook or digital photo book look like a professional created it. If you need a gift idea, check out the book ideas, for help with topical or themed scrapbook and greeting cards for weddings, babies, pets, graduation, travel, Mother’s Day, vacations, holidays, Christmas, Easter, family history, genealogy and more.

Try Picaboo – you can easily see their pricing – which is very reasonable for the quality and speed of creation of your custom books.

I guess it is no secret that this website is made using WordPress. I am experimenting with using a blog format for my site, rather than creating everything with just HTML pages.

A blog platform is easier and you can write your posts quickly and be up-to-date. The drawbacks are learning how to use the tools and widgets and plug ins!  But so far, playing with templates or themes is fun. I think this bright new theme fits my mood today. I’ve been watching the inauguration and it seemed to upbeat and positive, I just wanted this site to reflect that!

I hope our country will make the necessary changes to improve the lives of those being hurt by this recession. And I want to improve lots of things in my own life. I’m starting with learning about Wordpress themes! I am sure not an expert, but I figured out how to do some CSS editing and I’m proud about that. It’s a start anyway.

So, here’s to a sunny administration for the new President, and to all of you who read this page.

Digital Scrapbooks – When Do We Start?

There are many good reasons to make digital scrapbooks, memory books and journals. You might be totally new to scrapbooking and are trying to decide whether you want to buy traditional scrapbook papers, embellishments and attempt some layouts – or thinking of trying to make digital layouts on a computer. So, before you become a scrappin’ addict of any kind, some of the features that are catapulting the digital creation method of making scrapbooks into a popular hobby (or even a home based business) are discussed below. 

Here is a list of the top ten reasons to get into digital scrapbooking:

• It’s a way to be more creative, create the most unique scrapbooks, and have more creative control over your projects. The sources for imagery are unlimited since there are free sources, CDs with all kinds of clip art to use, or images can be scanned and edited.
  
• The actual materials cost little since most are created using a computer – expensive patterned paper or paper with pre printed designs are not needed.
  
• Free software is available to start using quickly, and many software options are available in all price ranges.
  
• The time to create a scrapbook is usually less than with traditional methods. The assembly time is shorter. You won’t be waiting for shipments from online purchases. No need to drive to stores to buy supplies, either.
  
• *Here’s a great reason* You could create an entire memory book and print an exact duplicate of it as many times as you’d like to give to family members or friends. Nice for gifts!
  
• Using a scanner, you can reproduce your old photos and use them in a background or as a highlighted image with out the worries the potential for their being damaged by the use of adhesives or by being in an album.
  
• You can find tons of freebies to download and use for your creations or make your own page designs and share those with others. And any element that is used in traditional scrapbook layouts has a digital version or counterpart, such as patterned paper, stickers, chipboard, cardstock, and metal embellishments.
  
• Use your digital photos right off your camera or flash card, saving you money because they are only printed out with the entire page for your book (no printing and cutting out separate photos or using expensive photo printing papers). You can, however, use photos that have been processed from a photo lab or printed on a photo printer (though you’ll have to add those with glue manually).
  
• Your layouts can be shared easily with the online scrapbooking community, as well as to “show off” your work to other digital scrapbookers!

I’m sure there are other great  reasons for digital scrapbooking that could have been listed here, but as a start, these are pretty compelling on their own. Though it won’t replace traditional scrapbook making, computer scrapbooks are here to stay.