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High-tech memoriesPosted: 7/12/2008 High-tech memoriesBy LINDSEY POISSON Published: July 10. 2008 6:00AM Zoom %7C Buy this photo With each family vacation and holiday gathering this summer, the backlog of photos and keepsakes grows bigger. Maybe too big.
My assignment was to figure out just how difficult -- or not -- it is to start making scrapbook pages with a laptop instead of glue and paper. More importantly, I would judge whether digital, or digi, scrapbooking was a better option. When schedules are busier than ever, budgets are tighter and technology more pervasive, is it easier and more convenient to go digital without risking the experience? Being a scrapper myself who’s scoffed at the thought of breaking with tradition and making digital pages, I had doubts. But I have to admit, even I was surprised. A long history EXTRA TO USE THE IMAGES My earliest scrapbooking memory is from more than 10 years ago when I taped my baby teeth (relax, they had already fallen out) and my bright pink retainer that I never wore (sorry, Mom) to a sheet of cardstock. In hindsight, that seems a little gross. But my methods for preserving photos and mementos are a little more sophisticated now. Anything I can imagine is painstakingly carried out by hand. I can expertly cut paper into almost any shape I want. Everything else I can draw using gel pens. Probably some of my most notable works include a lemur and sunset-lit cliff made using only a few scraps of paper. Through the Ranger’s 4-H Club in my hometown of Hartland, Mich., I made at least two entire scrapbooks to exhibit at the local Fowlerville Fair, where my work won a Judge’s Award and Best of Show. How could scrapbooking with a laptop and mouse come close to that? Getting started More than 4 million hits await you. No one wants to deal with all those Web sites trying to find the best ones. With half a chance, and at least a half-hour of dedicated searching, the results are surprising. Anything a budding digi scrapper could possibly want or need is there: galleries of scrapbook pages, tips, forums, tutorials and online shops. I need only a few tools to get started: my laptop, a few digital photos, a good scrapbooking program and the Internet. There’s a wide variety of scrapbooking software available. But for a beginner, it’s difficult to know what to get and how much to pay. Thankfully, Scrapbookflair.com offers an easy-to-download, simple-to-use scrapbooking program that includes backgrounds and accessories. All the essentials can be done through this program, including editing and placing photos, layering the entire page’s elements in a particular order and adding text. After a few hours of practice, anyone of any skill level can create fantastic work. The best part? It’s free. Many popular digi scrapbooking sites offer entire kits (backgrounds, accessories and almost anything else used in actual scrapbooking) or individual components completely free. Other items can be purchased for small fees. But once downloaded, these elements can be used over and over, project after project. How it works The work goes smoothly. Place a photo here and add a border; put some text there and change the font, size and color. Designing a page isn’t as difficult as it seems. I even go so far as to make a golden border --- my first homemade embellishment --- using a paint spray tool in Adobe Photoshop 6.0, save it and use it on the page I’m making in Scrapbook Flair. Any number of photos will do, and I can dress them up with ribbon, staples, tags or flowers to my heart’s content. When I’m done, I can save it, e-mail it or send it somewhere to be printed. But if it doesn’t turn out, it’s no problem. I just delete my work and start all over again. Anytime, anywhere It’s that easy. But it probably wouldn’t have been possible before digital. Scrapbooking often requires a lot of stuff. And slowly over the years I built up an arsenal of paper, pens, rubber stamps, glue, tags and other doodads and gadgetry contained in a Black & Decker tool chest, as well as several other scrapbook carriers. Lugging everything around to unpack and re-pack if I were to scrapbook somewhere other than home would be an absolute nightmare. It just wouldn’t happen. True, there are techniques I could do with my legion of supplies that I can’t do digitally yet. But it’s a small price to pay for getting rid of such a cumbersome burden. An hour later, the bistro starts to fill up with more customers. A family comes in with a baby whose squeals of delight are endearing, but reach a painfully high pitch. My coffee break is over. I snap my laptop shut and I’m off. It was only an hour, but that was enough time to get more done than probably three hours of cutting paper and placing photos by hand. No mess Staying up this late is unusual for me. But as I sat with a laptop indeed on my lap, I continued to work on my latest scrapbook page. Nudge this over, flip that and change the font color from black to more of a raw sienna. This frighteningly obsessive behavior is familiar. Many a night was spent during my youth putting the last touches on scrapbook pages until I literally collapsed from exhaustion. Stopping isn’t an option --- not until it’s done. Taking a break to sleep means potentially losing my current creative streak. It’s kind of a scrapper thing. This time, however, there’s no glue stick gunk all over my arms to contend with when I wake up hours later. No pieces of scrap paper littering my workspace. When I do cave and put my work down for the night --- about the same time "The Daily Show" makes a second run at 1 a.m. --- it’s only a matter of closing my laptop. LINDSEY POISSON can be reached at 870-1871 or by e-mail. Where to go Find information and free downloads for fonts, backgrounds, embellishments and other items. # www.ScrapbookFlair.com Download a design program and get some starter graphics for free. # www.ShabbyPrincess.com Whole kits available to download for free. # www.DesignerDigitals.com Great freebies available for registered users. # www.CottageArts.net Free downloads, training and helpful digi scrapbooking links. # www.Sweetcafe.org Free stuff downloads and more tips. Places to print (prices per page) # www.ScrapbookPictures.com 8x8: $1.49 8x10: $1.99 12x12: $2.49 Shipping is $2. # www.PurePrintDesigns.com 8x8: $1.50 8x10: n/a 12x12: $2.25 Shipping is $6. # www.Shutterfly.com 8x8: $3.49 or less (depending on quantity) 8x10: n/a 12x12: $6.99 or less (depending on quantity) Customers have option of receiving prints via mail or picking them up at a local Target store. Wegmans 6143 Peach St. and 5028 West Ridge Road 8x8: $7.99 10x10: $11.99 12x12: $14.99 |
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