For the second emerging technology post, I explored digital scrapbooking. Digital scrapbooking is creating scrapbooks online through a website. The difference between scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking is that with digital scrapbooking you don’t have the mess and hassle of cutting pages and pictures, it’s stored in your computer, and it’s free. Any scrapbooker will tell you that it is very expensive to buy all of the scrapbooking material (i.e. albums, decorative pages, scissors, tape, and multitudes of decorations). Also, when you digitally scrapbook through a website, they will provide you with layouts so you don’t have to start out from scratch if you don’t want to. The downside to digital scrapbooking is that you don’t have the finished product in your hands, it’s on the computer. You can pay for the website to print and publish your scrapbook in an actual book, print your scrapbook from home, or keep your scrapbook online. The website will allow you to save your scrapbook and then usually give you the option of sharing it. I did my sample scrapbook through Scrap Blog. It asked me if I wanted to share it and I said yes, so it sent it to my Face Book and Blogger for me.
Again, I used Scrap Blog to create my sample digital scrapbook, and I have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. Here is the process of digital scrapbooking:
1)Create a username and password
2)Pick a theme (layout)
3)Upload pictures from your computer
4)Begin dragging pictures into place
Once I got the hang of the process I was cropping and rotating pictures, changing fonts, and changing the frames, stickers, and backgrounds the website had originally provided me with. I felt like a professional! I am just so impressed with how easy it was. All of the tabs were easy to find and use. Their layouts are amazing! I added Scrap Blog to my favorites and I plan to make another scrapbook this weekend. I have always wanted to scrapbook but could never afford to do it and I never wanted to mess with the hassle of printing all of my pictures. Also, I was always afraid to try scrapbooking, because I would have to start from scratch. Digital scrapbooking allows me to choose layouts, so I don’t have to come up with decorating ideas unless I want to. For me, it was just completely convenient and fun. I am so happy I can scrapbook without the cost! If I don’t want to pay for a professional album of my scrapbook, I can print my scrapbook on photo paper and place it in an album.
My tips for future digital scrapbookers are:
1)You have to drag your pictures from the bar at the left and shrink, crop, and rotate them to fit the frame.
2)To rotate a picture: select the picture and either change the degrees in the bar at the right or click and drag on the small circle above the picture.
3)Everything can be changed, the background, frames, stickers, text balloons, font, and font colors.
4)Extra frames are located under stickers, not the frame tab.
It’s so easy and the results are so cute and creative that you have to try it!
P.S. My digital scrapbooking sample is located below. To view it, click on view full size in the bottom left hand corner of the black box.
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