I’d love for you to read this guest post from Lisa Corbin-Polak as an invitation to review your own scrapbooking history.
Are you new to scrapbooking? Or, like me, have you been at it a while? As my daughter (and only child) has grown, I find myself reflecting on change.
I have been a scrapbooker for a long time. I created my first page when my daughter was three years old; she is now twenty. Over the years, my toolbox, my workflow, my style, and my content have all evolved. In 2009 I fell in love with digital scrapbooking. I thought it would be interesting to compare how it started and where I am now.
I decided to create a layout, using a Simple Scrapper template, that shows a little of my memory keeping journey.
Supplies: Simple Scrapper Premium Membership Template and digital supplies from Anna Aspnes, One Little Bird Designs, Paislee Press, Sahlin Studio and Deca Designs
As I review my scrapbooking journey, I had to toss away the thought that “going digital” was responsible for how my scrapbooking has grown. Instead, I came to the conclusion that these items represent the biggest influence over my evolution: the digital camera, my computer and Photoshop Elements, online communities, and my iPhone 4S.
The Digital Camera: Being a 100% chronological scrapbooker, I was in love with the automatic organization of my photos. No longer did I have to guess as what month (or year) a photo was taken. The info was right there attached to the image.
The Computer with Photoshop Elements: Once I had my photos on the computer, I wanted to learn how to improve them (yes, I know you’re supposed to get it right in the camera, but you don’t always). I then figured out that I could use PSE to size and crop photos exactly as I wanted them for my layouts. I uploaded them for print, cut them out and was ready to go. I took it the next step to actually creating sketches. (I had no idea how close I was to digital at this time.)
Online Communities: I found so much help for learning how to use PSE/PS available online. The unexpected thing I found was a community of support, inspiration and challenges to push me in my craft. It was truly these challenges and forums that started me capturing more about me and our everyday lives.
iPhone4S: The camera on this baby is fabulous. It definitely helps me to capture those everyday moments.
I am almost certain that without the online community, I might be missing out on documenting a lot of our history. The day-to-day activities, in particular, might be lost: the things I wish I could remember from my own childhood or the things I may have cut due to the cropping of photos in my early paper scrapping days.
As you think through your own scrapolution, what has been the biggest influence on changes in your scrapbooking?
Really interesting! I like to see how your process has developed. I was thinking about this same thing the other day and I think, hands down, the biggest influence has been switching from film to digital. I started taking digital pictures years ago, but it was only a couple years ago that I finally got through scrapbooking the film and switched to scrapbooking with the digital photos. I’m not a digital scrapbooker, but I love the freedom of design I get from digital photos.
Hands down, that was a big influence for me. Digital photos sure make it a lot easier to know when they were taken!
Lisa – what a cool article! Love it – and I’m right there with you – funny how our progress is almost exactly the same!
Meg, would be fun to know the differences with your journey.
Great article, Lisa. Concise way to show your “evolution”! I’m right there with ya!
Thank you, Tammy. Deciding to “scrap” my journey really helped me to condense my story. It was fun.
Love how you documented your changes but for the same passion of scrapping those memories!
Hi Jana, would love to hear how your journey has evolved.
Wow, what a great article! I never did have time to “paper scrap” although I have a lot of stuff, including the Cricut Expression with LOTS of cartridges that I have used exactly once! My favorite part of this digital world has to be the photo data that my DSLR provides! Found the online community when I retired and love how I can now spend my days! I retired from a really stressful job so picking what I can do each day is a joy! Thanks for your time to write!
Janet, would love to join you in retirement! And I’m with you, love that metadata.
Great article!! I share the same evolution as you but I think the biggest thing for was my iMac (MacBook now). No more mess and now that I can digiscrap on the go with my MacBook, that really has changed everything.
I share your love of the portability!