Digital Scrapbooking

I've had a lot of comments about my digital scrapbook pages, so I thought I'd explain a little bit. First of all, I AM NOT AN EXPERT!!!! I love working with the computer and I enjoy scrapbooking, but I was getting WAY behind because I got tired of the mess of traditional paper scrapbooking. So I started to look into the digital scrapbooking thing. At first I was confused and overwhelmed by the many options for programs available. Then one morning I was watching television (it was like around five in the morning, I was still pregnant with Hadley, she was kicking so much that I couldn't sleep, so I was up watching infomercials) and on came this infomercial about Polaroid's "My Memories Suite" scrapbooking program. Of course they made it look fabulous, so I ordered it. Before it came I was feeling a little bit of buyer's remorse, hoping that I wouldn't be totally disappointed with the impulse purchase. Totally the opposite occurred....I love this program!

I paid about $100 for the program...I know it sounds like a lot, but wait! The research I had done before found that I would pay anywhere from $60 and up for a program like Adobe Photoshop, and those programs did not include any papers, embellishments, etc. The "My Memories Suite" comes with hundreds of papers, embellishments, etc., it is extremely easy to use, has some photo editing capabilities, and the possibilities are endless. Wow, I should get paid by Polaroid for this! Anyway, because of this program I have done more than 100 scrapbook pages in the last 3 months (I'm not kidding!). I am so excited that I am actually getting caught up on years of pictures! In fact, I used my program to make the title for my blog.

The Pros of Digital Scrapbooking:

1. No mess! No papers, scraps, nothing! No cleaning up afterwards! And hey, it's good for the environment!
2. I don't have to worry about the kids getting into the stuff, ruining pages, they can be right with me while I'm scrapbooking!
3. I'm not spending so much money on supplies! I bought this program and that's it! I can reuse papers and embellishments as much as I want. I've even downloaded THOUSANDS of freebies from the internet.
   
4. I can crop, resize, adjust pictures as much as I want without the expense of buying them from a photo shop. It's all digital. I've even gone back and scanned in pictures that I had already printed and finished pages that I needed to do years ago!
5. I can easily print the same page several times for several books - one for each kid and one for a family book if I want!
6. I can print the same page in several different sizes for any use!
7. Archival quality....forever! I can save my pages on CD or DVD and have them forever. The colors and pictures won't fade or rip or anything! If the pages printed don't look good in 20 or 30 years, my children have the digital images that they can print out again!
   

The only possible disadvantage might be the printing. I know there are a multitude of places you can have your pages printed at. I have two different places that I've had my pages printed. I order from a site online and it costs anywhere from $1.50 to $3.00 to print, depending on the paper (cardstock or normal weight paper). Or I've had them printed at Costco for $3.00 a page (12x12 size on photo paper). I probably prefer the Costco prints because of the quality of the photo paper, but I have been very pleased with my online orders and they cost less. So it may seem difficult to pay so much for pages, but I figure it costs about the same by the time you add up the cost of the paper, pictures, and embellishments you would use on regular scrapbook pages. Also, Polaroid and other places offer books already bound that you can have a whole book made up if you want!

Here are some pages I've done with "My Memories Suite":
This is an online freebie that I found. All I had to do was add Hadley's picture and then I added the title at the bottom. Simple page, yet so cute and so easy!

Here's a fun page. I used a picture as the entire background of the page and then added photos on top of it. This would not be possible with regular scrapbooking!

This page was pre-made by the program I have, I just added journaling, my pictures and I was done!

I always have "odd" snaps that don't really fit with other pages. So I've made these fun snap
pages that are so easy to do with digital scrapbooking!

I've even made some "little" pages that I had printed at Walmart on regular 4x6 photos to give to family and friends.

Well, I've rambled on long enough on this post. Hope this peaks some interest to you! I LOVE doing it. Like I said before, I'm not an expert and I'm definitely not perfect at it, but I love the end result and love to see my kids look at their books over and over again. Next to my children themselves, these books are my treasures!