Once upon a time I didn't see the point in scrapbooking. I thought it was sort of boring and Martha Stewart-ish to be completely honest, and the last thing I wanted was to be perceived as boring. Or loving Martha Stewart. I mean that woman is REALLY bad for the self-esteem. And I really haven't gotten excited about putting stickers on paper since I was about 7 years old. Aren't I a little old for that?
And then I got married.
When I received my disk of pictures from my photographer, I realized that I had 600+ pictures to figure out what to do with. I don't have that much wall space - seriously, what on earth was I going to do with all those pictures? You can stick them on Facebook, and that's fine and all, but then what? Don't you want tangible proof that those pictures actually exist? One day, don't you want to be able to look at them without having to boot up a computer? So obviously I was going to need to print them out. But then what do I do with a stack of 600 pictures. I could stick them in a photo album, for sure. But what about the important ones - how do you make them stand out if they're all 4x6's, 6 to a page in a photo album sleeve? What about the ones that tell a story? If you just stick them in a photo album, how do you tell the story?
A-ha! That was the moment I realized I was going to have to look into scrapbooking. I began with paper scrapping but found it really frustrating. Let's face it, I'm no artist, I can't draw to save my life - my stick figures barely even resemble people. So I need to buy things to get the effect that I want. Sometimes multiple things, because I'm also incredibly indecisive. I discovered that I need to move something around eleventy-billion times before I'm happy with it's placement. That's a little difficult when you've already happily applied the glue before realizing you'd like it much better if it was a half inch to the left... And finally the biggie - the time it takes. Every time you want to scrap a page, you need to go to your little stash and spend about an hour deciding which things you want to use, dragging them out, and then laying them all out on the table before you even get to begin to stick those things on paper. And then what happens when you realize that the perfect page needs that one thing to finish it? Do you guess where it'll go and put the rest of the stuff on the paper and hope for the best? Or do you run right out to the store (assuming you have one close by and it's not 11 o'clock at night) and pick it up? And spend a bunch more money while there buying more stuff.
Alrighty, so after all that you realize that paper scrapbooking really is more work than it's actually worth. And if you're me, you're never really 100% happy with how your pages have turned out anyway. And so when your house gets ripped apart and your kitchen moved into your dining room (where you always did your paper scrapping) and you realize that you're facing months of not being able to scrapbook because you don't have 1 single spot in the entire house that's not covered in reno-fallout, you go looking for another solution, and that's when I discovered digital scrapbooking.
Digital scrapbooking met all my needs. It addressed all those things that I didn't like about paper scrapping. Set up is instantaneous - in my case, just pop open my laptop and open the program. All the papers and elements and alphabets you could ever dream of are right there at your fingertips, just a mouse click away, and they never go away - when you've stuck a button on a page, you can turn right around and use that very same button over again. And again and again and again. It's like magic. You can work on multiple pages at once, so if you're like me and you have craft ADD you're not going to get bored easily. And clean up is as easy as hitting save and shutting down the program. No mess, no muss, no fuss. Awesome.
When I got pregnant and had my son I used the program to make birth announcements and Christmas cards, I just grabbed a template, popped my pictures into the blanks, and had them printed at Costco. It was so easy! My son is now 14 months old, and I've finished his first year album. Finished. Not many people I know can say that!
So just for fun (and because I love to show off how adorable my son is) here are a couple of my favorites from the past 2 years.
OK, maybe more than a couple. It's hard for me to play favorites, I love them all so much! Anyway, you get the point.
If you're interested in checking out digital scrapbooking, I have a coupon code for the program that I ended up buying. I checked out a few different programs, and
My Memories Suite met all my needs the best. I loved the fact that I could use any kit I found online in the program, including all the cool free ones available on the net. And there are a ton of freebies on the net if you look for them, you don't even need to look that hard! I also loved how completely idiot-proof the program is. It's just really really easy. The program is available at the
My Memories Suite website, and the coupon code is STMMMS37619
Give it a try - you'll be amazed how easy it makes your life!!
