Happy DSD!

If you don't know what DSD stands for, this post is for you! Today is Digital Scrapbooking Day, and since digi scrapping is my latest addiction *ahem* hobby, I thought it appropriate to blog a bit about it. I have been paper scrapbooking since summer of 1996 when I sat down and put my high school pictures and scraps into an album. Since then I've created over fifteen paper scrapbooking albums about me and my family. I love documenting my memories and being creative in the process, but it takes so much time and money that I was falling very far behind with our family albums. Once Nathaniel was born I was taking literally about a thousand pictures a month, and feeling very overwhelmed with actually scrapbooking them. I ended up completing a birth through 1 year album for Nathaniel, but other than that I did no scrapbooking for myself for two years. Shortly after Mary was born I started looking more and more into digital scrapbooking and just a few months later I have almost 100 layouts completed!

Digital Scrapbooking is super easy, can be very inexpensive, and FUN. Any free time I have these days is devoted to creating layouts. I can make one or two layouts a day during naptimes and after Nathaniel and Mary go to bed, whereas before it would take me just as long to pull out my supplies, figure out what pictures I had printed, and design a page. Then the next day, if I was still feeling motivated, I would actually sit down to put things together onto a page. Maybe another day would pass before I was even finished with one paper layout!

Paper scrapbooking can be pretty expensive. Digital scrapbooking can be absolutely free (as long as you already have a photo editing program) except for the cost of printing pages and buying an album. However, this pretty much equals the cost of buying a photo album and having regular pictures printed! There are a lot of designers out there, people just like me, who just love to digi scrap and want to try their hand at making papers and elements. Someday I may try to design my own things but for now I'm happy preserving my memories and getting caught up with my pictures. The designers out there, when they are getting started, put together kits of coordinating papers, frames, and other embellishments such as ribbon or flowers, and post them for free for people to use and try out. Designers typically get a following of people, and then apply at a store online to be accepted to create for profit. So if you know where to look, you can find lots of great kits and things to use for pages and not spend one cent!

If you want to learn more, I have a couple of links for you:

What Is Digital Scrapbooking?
Digital Scrapbooking 101

Here are two great resources for freebie kits:

http://www.shabbyprincess.com/ (click on "downloads")
http://www.ikeagoddess.blogspot.com/ (this blogger scours the internet every day for new freebies!)

Here are a few of my favorite pages:

And finally, today two of my layouts were featured on an up and coming digital scrapbooking designer's new blog! Check it out! I made these layouts from her freebie you can download and play around with in any photo editing program that does layers (Photoshop, Print Shop Pro, PhotoImpact). If any of you decide to try it out, let me know! I love to talk about digi scrapping with anyone (and everyone!)