...She's Clever

6 Ideas To Get Started

1.  Google.  I googled “digital scrapbooking”.  You’ll find more sites than you can keep track of (I’ll include links to some of my favorites).  Most offer freebies if you join their newsletters.  Lots of them also offer tutorials.  You’ll find that before you know it you’ll have so much stuff you’ll never be able to use it all (and this is just free stuff; naturally sometimes you’re going to see stuff you’ll want to buy, and they often run sales).  The best part about doing it yourself:  you can use the stuff again and again, you can change the colors, layouts, you can add or subtract anything you want – this is the ultimate in tailor-made hobbies.

2.  Learn the terminology.  For example, some people will call them digital backdrops, some will call them digital papers, some will call them textures, it’s all essentially the same thing (textures have an extra advantage over simply papers, but you could use them on any portion of your layout including the backdrop).  This is the same with the skills themselves (they’re pretty universal, so when you learn to do a page layout, you have the skill set to then do digital cards, to do album layouts (as opposed to scrapbooking which generally is more personal/less formal), to make your own storyboards, etc.

3. Find what suits you.  Like I said there’s so much free stuff available I advise you to pick and choose what you REALLY like.  And stay organized – this cannot be overemphasized.

4.  Find printers you like.  This is a bit of “you get what you pay for” (I’ve used Shutterfly, and now that I spend time on CM I can recognize deficiencies in color and paper quality, etc.).  I change printers/vendors based on needs: sometimes I want a 12x12 and don’t like the covers from one vendor, other times I get a really good deal on printing [GROUPON] and snatch it up knowing I won’t use it for a while, etc.  [I will, in another post, provide links to vendors I use/recommend.]

5.  After you’ve signed up for some blogs and newsletters that you trust and that make sense to you unregister from ones that are not as useful to you.

6.  I really wanted to start at the baby pics, but they are all SOOOOO adorable, how could I possibly choose? My best tip of all with regard to culling (or “weeding out”) your photos:  START BACKWARDS.  The longer you take picks and spend on photography websites/forums the better trained your eye and skill will be.  You’ll at least find it easier by the time you get to the baby pics.  Ultimately you’re still likely to have way too many but you’ll by then know how to find a home in your layouts for the not-so-perfect ones.