Kindergarten

A few years ago, Cathy Zielske, after the demise of Simple Scrapbooks (moment of silence...), jumped into the wonderful world of creating digital scrapbooking templates.  I have been what is considered a "hybrid" scrapbooker for several years.  I still love cutting paper and adhering photos and such.  What I have learned, however, about the traditional form of scraopbooking, now that I have had books for a few years:

#1 Pictures printed from my printer, even though it's a photo printer, fade.  I LOVE off-sizes of pictures, so getting the ol' 4 x 6" huge discount processed photos does not mesh with most of my scrapbooking design desires.  I find it limiting.  I believe that I have probably acquired a better printer and better paper over the years, but my earliest self-printed photos are fading.  Sigh.
#2 Embellishments like to come unglued.  Adhesives are not always true to adhering.  Things fall off pages.
#3 Embellishments dislike page protectors (or vice versa?).  Scarpbooks that are bumpy and lumpy do not like to store well.
#4 D-ring scrapbooks, which I love-love-LOVE, are not friends of gravity when they sit on a shelf for a while.  Ever had a binder that just sits on a shelf fora while?  And then you open it and everything's crooked?  Yep.  That's what I mean.
#5 No matter what, my craft storing areas in my house have been merciless.  When it was the basement, it was too humid.  Now it's the loft, and the afternoon sun is brutal.
#6 Traditional scrapbooking always requires lots of room for me to spread out.  I don't always have the time to tidy up after myself.

Enter Designer Digitals,with a HUGE selection of everything digital including designers like Cathy and Ali Edwards.  I would buy a few things, like paper and such, and then still print them out in the end.

A bit ago, I purchased this template after seeing what Cathy did with it.  It was a while ago, and I can't find Cathy's blog posts on it, but as soon as I saw what she created, I bought the template.  I decided that I would  use this to document Max's schooling and perhaps go back and place some of what I can find of Ignatius' schooling in there as well.

So, what do you need to do this digi stuff?  Some sort of photo editing software, such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, or, for the budget-consious, Paint.Net (freeware).  You also need a relative comfort level with these or the ability and desire to learn.  Once you know a few simple steps to the programs, you are golden.  No graphic designer degree required...I promise!  Designer Digitals has tutorials, I took a community education class at Heartland Community College, Cathy puts tutorials on her blog, and Jessica Sprague has excellent online classes.

I am still on the fence between digi and traditional.  These few pages were a LOT quicker to produce than would have been so for a traditional scrapbook.  They look great, very clean, very simple, very Cathy.  Some digital elements look JUST like embellishments, such as brads and ribbons, if preferred.  Cathy presented this as a hybrid when she did it.  It could easily be printed for an 8.5 x 11" book if I wanted to go that route.  We shall see.  I have these pages saved as a PDF file.  Please click on the images for a larger view.