Monday, December 28, 2009

Scrapping

Last year I spent approximately 9657 hours between Christmas and New Year's Eve chronicling our entire year in scrap book pages. In previous years I had managed to complete this task in just 8544 hours during that lovely week of aftermath but last year I had discovered digital scrapping and just knew it would save me tons and tons of time. What I didn't take into account was that I was creating all these wonderful pages in 8.5"x 11" to fit my printer but the books I had bought called for 12"x 12" pages...which meant I did this very cool combination of digital and old fashioned scrap booking but it took foreeeeeever to do.

This year I had a new plan of attack. I even started a bit early and had picked out my favorite few pictures from at least 10 out of the 75 events I photographed in 2009! I also had figured out that Scott's new printers for his t-shirt business would work with 12"x 12" paper and he had all these lovely ink cartridges that were just sitting around doing nothing since he had swapped them out for special transfer inks. I was a bit worried about the cost of the photo paper in this size but was very happy to find that HP was having a great sale on their 13"x19 paper (I can trim) making it only $0.89 per sheet!

I started Christmas Day afternoon and just 36 hours later (including sleep) I was DONE!! 52 scrap book pages all done digitally. Some were "quickie" pages designed by "real" scrap queens where I just had to plug in a picture or two but most were done by me using papers and elements that I've either purchased or downloaded for free.

Enjoy a selection of my favorites!












4 comments:

Laura said...

Those are great scrapbooking pages... My Mom is a huge scrapper and has spent the past few years scrapping my entire life (I'm 35!). She is now all caught up and follows us around with a camera all the time to get some new pics to work with! :-)

What software, web sites, etc. do you use to do your digital scrapping? I could get into it a bit more if I could do 99% on the computer... My Mom is old school and has a room full of paper and paper products.

PaintCrazy said...

Laura,

I use Photoshop as my software. It's kind of hard to learn in my opinion but if you Google "Photoshop tutorials" you'll find there's a ton of ways to learn how to use it. I really only use a handful of features!

As for websites, there are tons of scrapbooking bloggers who actually CREATE stuff and then either sell it or give it away for free. Many have "stores" where they sell their kits too. Sometimes they do these "trains" where each person creates papers and elements with a certain theme and color scheme and you can download all of it for free ending up with hundreds of "pieces".

Start googling for digital scrapbooking and you'll find enough to overwhelm you for a long time!

TnTConnect said...

OMG! You do the most beautiful work! I truly wish I had your talents. I am sure the computer helps, but you have been very good behind your camera. Your kids are very lucky, as mine have to make do with a few photos and once in a while a page I try to put together.

Laura said...

I use photoshop alot at work/home for editing photos and creating web graphics, so I should have a good start! I guess you just create a new 12x12 file and add in all of the embellishments and pictures? I can totally do that...! Now I have something new to google and keep me occupied!

:-)