My latest obsession

Digital scrapbooking rocks!

It's my latest thing. And I say latest because even though I was introduced to the digital scrapbooking when I was asked to do the My Memories Suite giveaway last year, I never really got into it much until... well... this January.

Last year, I planned to give my grandmother a photobook with the photos I scanned from her albums and laid out like scrapbooks. Since I'm not very good at digital scrapbook layouts, I decided to use quick pages and have been searching online for free ones. Quick pages are ready-to-use templates created by designers. You simply have to insert your photo into the quick page image (using a image editing software like My Memories Suite or Photoshop) and you're ready to print. In the process of searching, I stumbled upon a lot of free digital scrapbook kits. Kits contain background images, frames, and other embellishments you can use to create digital scrapbook pages. The images are almost always in high resolution, and really, REALLY pretty. 

So I have been downloading. And downloading, and downloading and downloading and now I have quite a stash of images on my hard drive which are taking up gigabytes of space. And when I got back from vacation, instead of simply printing my daughter's photos for her album, I decided to create digital scrapbook images first. I was hooked. Especially after I had them printed and saw how beautiful the pages are!

Here is an example of one of my layouts.

I used elements from Everyday Mom Ideas' Memories of a Mother kit. I love the soft colors in this kit. This is actually one of my best pages and as it is, it still needs some work. Notice how the flowers seem to be floating on top of the page and not attached to the page? *sigh* A few more clicks and I could have added shadow to make them look like they were attached to the page. I created a lot of layouts already, but since I'm new to this, the others didn't turn out so well (which I realized AFTER I printed them.. aarrrgh! Waste of money and ink).

I need more practice and practice I will! In fact, I was so inspired with all the free images I downloaded that I got this idea to try making a digital scrapbooking kit using the images of my projects (I do have a lot of fabric flowers), sewing supplies, and home decor and have the kit available for free download here. I'm not a digital artist but I do know the basics of Photoshop and I do have a camera at home. Possible. Definitely POSSIBLE! I can't wait to start!

NOTE: During my search for freebies earlier, I stumbled upon 2 blog trains! Blog trains work like this: You start from one blog, and then click the link there to go to the next blog. And each blog you visit on the blog train offers a freebie!! If you want free images, be sure to visit these blog trains:

- Wilma4Ever: Their theme this month is 'On the Farm' (farm-related images and some cute farm animals)

- ScrapsnPieces: Their theme this month is 'In the Kitchen' (kitchen and cooking related images)