I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

I helped a friend of mine make her own digital album today and it made me all the more anxious to do some work on my own album. I actually did finish an album recently, with the pictures from our beach vacation last year. I have been ordering strictly through York Photo Labs, because they have great specials and I can often get my albums printed for 60% off the normal price. They are the least expensive maker of digital albums and yet I am very happy with their quality. I also have found that if you have an issue with a book, they are very good about giving a replacement. This may all be boring for you, and I'm sorry! I just really rely on reviews personally, and I wanted you to know why I am sold on York.
My daughter, who was used to my making her a really thick and HEAVY album twice in a year, has been very disappointed by my negligence in scrapbooking. But although I feel guilty when I think about it, I still know deep in my heart that it is more important to be living life than to be scrapbooking it. I mean, since I have to choose!

So here are a few of my favorite pages from my latest digital album. Our Beach Vacation

 I often make custom cover books, but I made a window book this time and liked how it turned out.

 It's so easy to make one of your pictures into a background for your page, like I did above. I actually take pictures specifically to be used as background now.

 I really liked this page. I like that I can add clip art for free. That beats stickers!

Another example of the picture being the background. This reads, " Your sibling is the only other person who knows exactly what growing up in your family was really like."

One of my favorite pictures of us at the beach.

 

I find I can get a page done here and there, and I like not having to get everything out like stickers and paper and photos. I have to be saving money not buying all those things, too.

But don't give up on me, die hard scrapbookers! I still have a box of pictures printed out and several books still in their wrappers waiting for me to finish someday.

When I write next, I'd like to write about scrapbooking traditionally WITH my kids, as I was able to share this hobby with them last month. I also hope to share some Disney photography tips in the upcoming blogs.

If you have any questions, please ask!

I normally hate computers, but.....

I am about to tell you why I love digital scrapbooking! Yes, this is me, the one who said that nothing could ever replace the feel of the paper and stickers in my hands. Take my words into consideration, put them in the back of your mind, because you may someday decide to make a digital album, too. The pictures I have chosen today are a bit odd, I admit. However, I took them to use as backgrounds and cut outs for my son's digital album. Everything matches the photos! I love his little clothes, and this is a way for me to still "keep" them digitally, once he outgrows them.

Just imagine these with photos over top of them in a Christmas layout. I can use them as borders, backgrounds, mats, "stickers", really you can do so much more than you can with a traditional album as far as coordinating your embellishments on a page.

Find the bib odd? Well, it looked great as a background for Christmas!

I have to say that when I ordered my son's album yesterday and it was nearly $250. after shipping and tax, I gulped big time! It was a 12x12. Here is a tip, if you do an album, just order an 11x8.5 .It isn't that much smaller, but the price difference is phenomenal! I have always made that size, and now I plan on going back to it. Example, I ordered this size a few weeks ago and it cost me around $150. And the smaller and cheaper size even had 8 more pages in it!

So, I figured out how much I would have spent on a traditional album with nearly the same amount of pages. (You can only fit 80 in a traditional album compared to topping out at 100 in a digital.) The price was considerably lower for a 12x12 album using the original materials, (album, pages, protectors) however I didn't add the price of paper, stickers, adhesives and photo processing. I'm thinking that would have changed things!

So here is where we are with my insane hobby. I am working on my son's first birthday pages in a brand new book. That means I'm one month behind for him. He has 2 digital albums already ordered and a 12x12 traditional album with his professional pictures and little mementos (like hair clippings) in it. This album is 52 pages. Sadly, in my daughter's album, I am working on her birthday, which is in May. I went to a scrapbooking night and was only able to do maybe 2 pages because I have gotten so used to working with the digital albums that I found it hard to do the traditional! Uh OH! Have no fear, I'm not giving traditional scrapbooking up! It is completely different, so it's a challenge. But I like a challenge!

Scrap Happy!

A Digital Baby Album

I'm caught up on my new son's digital album because I do a few pages every time I have enough pictures. The fuzzy photo above is what the side of the screen looks like. it shows you the pages you have completed, and the page you see blank is left waiting for pictures I want to take of the baby's room.

He already has 38 pages in his album, and this is one that I just did today.

I'm really loving this kind of scrapbooking. My supplies aren't all out everywhere, my pages are so easy to switch around if I decide I want different pages facing one another, and there are so many cool things you can do with the Storybook 2 Creator program! After I took this picture of the above page, I decided I wanted to give the circular photos some shadow, so I did! It changed the page so much. I do miss my stickers, but you can purchase "digital stickers", I'm just being cheap and also, I know that the more toys I have to play with, the longer it will take me to do a page!

For example, I designed the page above, making the picture of the baby after his bath the background (it has a bit of a haze to it as well, to make it soft) and adding the pictures with soft edges to complete the page. This is the second page of his first bath. The first isn't shown here, and I will journal on it, leaving this page journal free. I still do my journaling later, even in my digital scrapbooking! See, uploading photos and creating pages are something I can do while nursing, and I save the journaling for a time when everyone is sleeping.

Scrap Happy!

Three months to go!

I have to admit that I saw a picture like this in a baby photography book, and that's where I stole the idea. I loved it! The hardest part about taking this picture myself wasn't the aiming of the camera, but covering the rest of me up so that I was decent! I used a black sheet behind us, brought in an extra light, and opened the blinds a little (as much as I dared!) for some natural light.
Wow! So much has happened in a week! I have been using the Cm program, Storybook plus and LOVING it! I can't believe all the stuff you can do with this program, it blows every other kind of digital album away! I am almost done with my album, including journaling. I'm just trying to get the Disney princess embellishments I've had trouble ordering. I have done just a page or 2 of Jae's traditional album this week, even though I did leave everything out and plan to do the same in the upcoming week. I actually preferred to do the digital album!!! It was just so fun figuring out all the features! You can add pictures and text anywhere you want to, which is pretty awesome! You can mat your pictures, use so many fonts, enlarge your pictures and text, even make tags, shadow, change texture (just by sight, it won't actually feel different), and so many other things I won't even get into here! I do have to say that because of all the options, it can take quite a while to do an album, although it always has taken me a long time to do a CM digital album, probably because there are so many more options than the other guys. UPDATE! When I wrote this last night, I hadn't finished the album yet, and now I have. I went to the Cm website and found my consultant's website and ordered the princess embellishments. Let me tell you , it was pretty easy! This is just a download, so it cost me just $4, no shipping. I could use it immediately, too, and believe me, I did! It was awesome! I had so much fun, and stayed up til 3am. UG! But I couldn't tear myself away. I reviewed my book carefully, and it's a good thing, too because I had some things that were too close to the edges and needed adjusted. I kept a scrap piece of paper and wrote down the page numbers and what needed switched and then saved all that for today. So, I ordered my album at last, and it is probably the best one I have ever done. (updated on Oct. 5th)

Anyway, I still have found plenty of time to do all the other things in my life, including hobbies! I started on the back of my daughter's quilt and I am making headway with the baby blanket, probably because I tried to work on it for an hour a day this past week. I like knitting because you can do it while watching TV. I also ordered a bunch more pictures, and am just waiting for them to come in and swallow me up! Seriously, I am so behind I don't even want to try and figure out how much I have to average a day in order to be done by my due date!
Scrap Happy!

Digital scrapbooking

Lately, I have been doing some digital scrapbooking. Not that this is entirely new to me, but I have learned several things lately, and thought I would share. First, as you know, I am a huge supporter of Creative Memories. I had made several albums using them, and was always happy with the free program. However, I had some problems with the last book I made, and couldn't get it to print. Finally, and this is over a year after I had completed the album, I found a number for CM, called and received another number for the tech department, sat on hold for about 7 minutes and finally talked with a wonderful guy, who understood my uncomputer saavy way of saying things and was able to help me answer all of my questions! Now, in the meantime, I had purchased the new Storybook Creator plus from Creative Memories and found it harder to use than the original FREE version that you can download by going to Creative Memories website. In fact, I became so frustrated one day, that I felt sick and had to give up on it! I decided to try another company! ( I know, *GASP!*) But Picabo turned out to be a big pain as well! I had to download all this stuff, and then I ended up not wanting it. It was a huge waste of time. I always get my pictures printed from Snapfish, an online company, and I'm usually pretty happy with them. I order them and they get shipped right to me. I like that. So, I noticed they had a sale on scrapbooks and decided to make one of my family summer. We saw so many family members this summer, and I wanted a book for myself to remember it. One night, when I had insomnia from my pregnancy, I went on and completed a whole album! I found it very easy to use. it was very simple, there just weren't a whole lot of options for backgrounds and layouts. But when I ordered it and got 40 % off, I was excited. (You have to watch for the sales, they aren't going on all the time. But you can always create a book and wait for a sale. Just be aware that although they do not tell you you can only order one at the sale price, that has been the case, at least I've heard that is. I personally didn't try it.) The book came so quickly that I was amazed. Compared to CM, it was much quicker. I was pleased with the result, although the pictures are a bit grainy, you get what you pay for! After receiving this album, I really wanted to get back to CM, if only so that I could return the product if I couldn't get it to work. After calling the CM tech, finally geting to order the album I'd made for my cousin a year ago, and having it shipped straight to him, (that was a nice feature and saved me paying shipping twice) I started to work on an album for Princess Camp. One thing I like about CM over the others is that I have more room for writing. I never felt like I had enough room for journalling with Snapfish, and often it really wrote small, too small to read on the computer screen. Sometimes you can enlarge your font, but not always, and at times you lose a lot of the words by enlarging it as much as you'd like.
So, that's where I am now, creating an album about Princess Camp via CM. I like that I'll be able to send my album to the other princess' moms when it's done. Then they can decide if they want one, too! I still have to figure out how to add on the second disk from the Storybook plus, but I'm getting there!

As for traditional scrapbooking, I decided to take over my daughter's desk for a bit and leave my scrapbooking supplies out. I have done a few pages and my problem there is that I have laid out all the pages, but have consistantly forgotten things I want to include (8x10 pictures, a program...) and end up having to reconfigure everything. Fortunately, I do this on paper with a pencil so that I can fix my mistakes. Whew! It's hard feeling this much pressure to get things done before the baby arrives! I haven't even mentioned the quilt and afgan I'm making!
Scrap Happy, I know I am!