Friday, February 13, 2009

digital scrapbooking

I have been asked by a couple of friends via facebook about digital scrapbooking...what it is, how to and some sites etc. I thought I'd put a post here about it and send them here (just click on the purple coloured words and you'll head to the site I'm talking about).

Essentially digital scrapbooking is using digital 'elements' to create scrapbook pages all on your computer, they can be saved as jpegs and printed on your home printer or through a photo developer, or you can just save them to a disc & can share them easily via email, flickr or even facebook!

OK, design software, I use gimp because it's free! You can download trials of photoshop, photoshop elements and Creative Suite if you think you might like to purchase some slightly more user friendly software...There are other software options, but photoshop seems to be a main one.

Edited to add: Quick pages.... basically the page is made for you and you just put your photo into it....check out this one by Lainie in the Scrapbook Outlet gallery. You may find some free quick pages in a google search or in the links below :-)
Lainie has used Raspberry Road Designs (the link will take you to the freebies page). There are a few QP kits (short for Quick Page) there!

Once you have that you need to get a basic tutorial and some 'resources' to play with.
Digital scrapbooking 101
Two peas tutorials
digital scrapbook pages photoshop elements tutorial for a first page
Everyday Digital Scrapbooking - lots of links on this page, for a first page tutorial and a free ebook too!
gimp tutorial - great tutorial but I don't like the halloween subject at all! this tutorial has some other links on which tell you about the different tools of gimp and how to use them etc.

To create your pages you need some papers and elements etc...
google 'digital kit free' and you get quite a few freebie things to start with...good to playwith before spending any money! But I'll link a few that you can check out:
Eidou - with some NZ designers :-)
shappy princess
free digital scrapbooking
two peas freebies
Jessica Sprague - also does some fantastic online workshops on using photoshop for pages and photo editing too

And when you think about buying some kits...
We are story tellers and Eidou and two peas are some of my fave places!

Once you have played with the layers etc a little...you can get tutorials for adding shadows (so the papers, titles and embellishments have some depth) and other things...but save that till you have the basic idea!

Hope that helps a little.....feel free to ask me a specific question, which i will TRY to answer but am still new to this kind of creativity too :-)

Saturday, February 07, 2009

playtime

for me :-) kids have been happily playing with 'paint' on the computer..drawing ballet scenes...so I've had a chance to create.

I have had some 3 bugs papers from Scrapbook Outlet to play with and they worked well with many of my summer photos...I have put more layouts in the SBO gallery if you are interested. Playing Games is a fave though because I was able to use some vintage game pieces, lace and a page from a games book as well as some other bits I've had in my stash for a while. I loved this 3 bugs paper because it fitted with the kind of 'retro-ness' of the game 'squatter' which we were playing in the photo.


Now ...the 3 bugs paper probably seems too pretty for such a subject...but I chose it because of the 'delicate' nature of my daughters tummy! had fun using some of the MR Campy Cosmo Cricket stuff here too.


NZ Dares is back...what did you learn in 2008? would love to see you do a layout on it & upload for the dares!
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