Meshing Digital and Traditional Scrapbooks

In 2008 we took a family vacation to Florida.  When we got home I started a scrapbook.  The traditional 12x12 album with paper and stickers and pictures that I had printed.  As happens to many of us, I got derailed and didn't finish the album.  Fast forward to today I have discovered digital scrapbooking. 

So how do I finish this Florida album?  I have all of the pictures digital (I even backed them up on CD at the time).  I had about 20 pages done.  That's no small amount to redo or small expense in a new book.  Twelve x twelve pages are too large to scan on most home scanners.  I decided the solution was to create new pages and have them printed out.  But where to get 12x12 prints?

I bet you know what I did next!  That's right.  I visited my friend Google and came up with a few places.  Then, I found this great blog about how to have your digital pages printed, Scrapping with Liz, Printing Digital Scrapbook Pages.  She suggested Persnickety Prints for individual pages.  I tried them out and LOVED (how do I put a little heart in for the O?) the quality of the prints. Plus they were only $1.99 per page.  In her blog, Liz mentioned printing with a white border around your pages.  I tried that too, but I don't think it mattered if I was adding it to an existing album.

So in just a few days I went from a partially done album to a complete printed album and something strange happened.  I loved looking at the pages online too.  Then I started wondering how I would get my already done pictures onto the computer.  Well, that was easy too.  Once again my friend Google lead me to a blog that said, "Take a picture of your pages."  Palm of hand to face!  Doh!

This was a little trickier than I expected , but I set up a "photo studio" with lighting and angled everything just right so there would be no glare.  For the most part it turned out pretty great.  And now I have an amazing vacation album both digital and printed.  Here is a slide show I made of a few of the pages.

Making your own Embellishments for Digital Scrapbooking

Finding free embellishments can take time and sometimes you don't find what you are looking for.  But you may have a great picture and think, 'Without the background this would look amazing on my page.'  That's what happened to me.  I know I can cut out backgrounds in Photo Shop, but I haven't installed it on my new computer.  Plus I know it's more complicated than what most people want to do.

Sooooo.....since I didn't want to get off the couch and find my Photoshop CDs I went with my default mode:  Google Search!  Low and behold I found out that a background removal tool was added MS Word 2010 and I had that on my computer! 

You can download a FREE version, Office 2010 Starter.  This is what I have.  It comes with Word and Excel with reduced functionality, but it has the background remover tool!  Woohoo!  This means you have free access to a tool to make your own free embellishments for your digital scrapbook.  Don't you just love the word free?  I can't tell you how excited I was!!!!!  Just Google it and you'll find a download available

Now you think I'm going to tell you how to use this wonderful tool.  I'm not.  Instead, here's a video that is a great tutorial:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRjyEBIrDyQ.  Watch, learn, and enjoy.

Now that you know how to remove the background, what do you do with the picture?  How do you get it into the scrapbook?  First, you need to save it as a PNG file.  This type of file saves the background as "see through;" no color, no white, etc.  I looked for a video tutorial and couldn't find one, but here is the step by step process.

1.  Right click on the image (after the background is removed).
2.  Choose "Save Picture As" (yep, that's my crazy cat, Snuggles)

 

3. Choose the location you want to save the file and give it a name.

4. Click the arrow on the right side of the "Save as type" box and choose Portable Network Graphics.

5.  Click "Save" and you are done

Now the picture without a background can be imported into whatever scrapbooking software you use.  Since that depends on your software, I'm going to trust you know how to add embellishments and pictures to your software.  Just be sure you remembered where you saved the file so you can find it again!

Here is a page where I used this technique to crop out my son.

Before:

After:

I had a great picture of a creepy statue from Six Flags Fright Night,

so I cropped out the background:

 

and added it to the page.

For this page I cropped out the people and and a snake head.  Then made a "scene" from them.  I used embellishments from Carena's Designs Old Wild West Sampler Freebie.  (Oh yeah, free again!)  Then added some great snake pictures my son took across the bottom.

Here are some of the embellishments I've made from pictures I took of my ornaments

and then used on this page of my family decorating the tree.

As an aside, the background on this page is a picture I took out of focus of my friends Christmas tree.  Thanks, Kellie!

This is just me playing around.  I cropped out my son doing a force push in his Halloween costume and made him float over the beach.  Honestly, this is what I did when I was learning to use this technique.  May the force be with you as you scrap!

Discovering Digital Scrapbooking

I love to scrapbook.  I've been doing it for years, but quite frankly I find it tedious to pull out all the stuff, cut papers, trim pictures, and generally make a big mess.  A couple of years ago I put my vacation pictures into an album from Snapfish.  I did all of that in the mornings while I was still on vacation.  (My family likes to sleep in and I'm a morning person.)  I was so excited to have it done by the time we got home and it was printed out and in my hands in about a week.

However, there weren't very many options for the album.  I couldn't even add text without creating a "picture of a text" in MS Publisher.  No stickers, limited backgrounds, and no free moving pictures.  I was sort of frustrated with it at that point and didn't hurry back.

A year or so later I saw a friend's album from Shutterfly and it was very robust.  I loved it.  But I was busy and didn't really do anything with it. 

A year and a half ago we moved from North Dakota to Missouri and I had to pack up all my scrapbooks and supplies.  In the new house I don't really have a place to keep them, but I was determined to get back on the scrapbooking wagon.  So I went to a crop at the local store and met a couple of nice ladies.  Worked on a few pages and discovered everyone around here is really into paper piecing.  Arrgghhh.  That is too much detail work for me.  And while the pages are beautiful (gorgeous and fantastic), I feel like the pages become more about the scrapbook and less about the photos and memories.  I generally like simple pages that highlight my photos and help tell my stories.

I once again stalled out on my scrapbooking adventure.  Then about 6 weeks ago I decided I was going to get my 2013 album completed.  But as I was thinking about it I was remembering my friends beautiful digital scrapbook.  And I decided I wanted to give it another try.  So I did what I do whenever I start something new.  I Googled it.

I started looking at options.  Online software vs. software I could buy and have on my computer.  Deciding spending no money was the right way to try it out I limited myself to online software.  The reviews said MixBook and Shutterfly had the most options and were the "best price for the money."

I ended up choosing MixBook and it was exceptionally simple to use with many themes and choices.  I did my whole 2013 album in a few weeks,  300+ pages.  Some I used their layouts, some I modiefied their layouts, and some I did my own from scratch.  Which is pretty much the way I paper scrapbook too.

Things I liked:  I could add my own backgrounds and embellishments.  I wasn't limited to what they offered and didn't have to pay to use their "extras."  There were lots of premade options including lots of blank layouts for adding my own embellishments.  I can use my own pictures as backgrounds and fade them out. The software is easy to use and understand.

Things I didn't like:  I can't round the edges of my pictures.  I may get creative to figure this out in the future but there was no easy way to do it.

Later I tried Shutterfly, but found it much less intuitive.  And while it had a few more options (not many really) I found it harder to learn and use, so I gave up pretty quickly.

Here are some of the pictures I made with Mixbook:

This is a pre-made layout from MixBook.  I just popped in the two pictures and added in the text for the dog's name.  Super easy and done!

This is a pre-made page that I modified.  There was only two pictures at the bottom and they stopped where the big picture stopped.  I modified the pictures across the bottom and added the small picture inside the other picture.  I will also give photo credit to my SIL here.  She took a couple of these pictures.

This is my own layout.  I faded one of my own pictures into the background and added the others on top.  Because the page is so busy and I didn't want to take away from the background picture I didn't add any embellishments.

This page is from a free kit I downloaded for free from DigiDesign Resort.  I then uploaded a few of their pieces to MixBook and plugged in my pictures. Their are many many embellishments and kits available online.  If you're clever you can find many free ones.  I haven't paid for any yet.  But even if you do buy them the best part is you can use them over and over and over unlike with paper scrapbooking.

I have tried (successfully and unsuccessfully) a few other things and will share those in the future.  Happy scrapbooking!