grace aloud

Encyclopedia Entry: D is for Digital Scrapbooking

Besides reading, my first answer when someone asks me my hobbies is “I digital scrapbook.”  The next thing that comes out of my mouth is usually, “Well, it’s just like real scrapbooking, but you do it in photoshop.  Anything you could get for a real scrapbook—buttons, ribbons, papers—They make digitally!”  And then you see the light come on.  :)  

I started digital scrapbooking (or “digiscrapping” for short) not too long after Jonathan and I got married in 2006.  His uncle gave us some software to try and edit a little video (Adobe Premiere Elements) and it came bundled with Photoshop Elements.  In googling some tutorials for editing pictures with Photoshop Elements, I came across some digiscrapping tutorials, then supplies… And the rest is history!

I enjoy putting pages together, but unfortunately, I’m a little too much like I was when I was a paper scrapper… Let me explain.  When I bought supplies for paper scrapping, I was always hesitant to use them because after I used them, they would be gone… and what if I wanted them again??  But I couldn’t resist the lure of all the wonderful STUFF out there!  I was more of a supply collector than a scrapbooker, LOL!  

Now, in digi, it’s not like if I use it, it will be gone—that’s one of the perks!  You can use stuf over and over and over again!  But I still spend a lot more time collecting and organizing my supplies than I do actually scrapping.  I justify it by saying that I obviously need to have some order in my life, with everything being so chaotic…  Maybe I’ll scrap more when I’m out of grad school!

But I do love the pages.  Last spring, I had a book printed when I got a free coupon from Shutterfly, with all of my favorite pages.  It’s so fun to look through it and enjoy the work that I did right there on paper, instead of just stuck in my computer!  I’m hopeful that I’ll make a book again—that’s the end goal of these encyclopedia entries!

And then, one day, I hope my children enjoy looking through these stories, and getting a glimpse of what their mom was like before she got old!