Digitial Scrapbooking 101...

I won't claim to be an expert on the whole digital scrapbooking thing but several of you have asked how I do it so here it goes...
1. I use a program called Adobe Photoshop, a friend of mine uses Adobe Photoshop Elements and I believe that it is a cheaper version of the program that I have. I have never seen the Elements program so I am not sure what the differences are but my friend has doen amazing things using the Elements, so I know it works.

Photoshop can be a bit overwhelming at first, but once you learn the basics you'll be amazed at what you can do. One of my sister's took a class at the local college but it was really just a self learned course where you followed the tutorials in the manual that you bought for the class. I was fortunate enough to be able to take a few classes when I was teaching and then with my sister's help, and lots of just playing with it know how to do a few things with it now. The great thing is that there are tons of tutorials out there to help you learn how to digital scrapbook. Photoshop is the place where you actually work with both the downloaded stuff (paper, elements etc.) and your pictures, turning them into scrapbook pages.

2. Go to one of the sites listed below and start downloading the "freebies" so that you will have paper, buttons, ribbons, etc to work with.
I would suggest starting with some of the free downloads from the Shabby Princess as they are complete sets and will give you tons to start with.
www.shabbyprincess.com
www.heatheranndesigns.com
www.thedigichick.com
www.littledreamerdesigns.com
www.sweetshoppedesigns.com

you can also buy some sets if you want too but if you start searching the web you will find that there are lots of freebies out there. One of my favorite sites is www.littledreamerdesigns.com
they have Wednesday dollar specials, sign up for their newsletter and every week they'll send you an email and you can find their $1 kit...it so much better that spending that $1 at Target! I have gotten some really cool kits by just buying when they are on sell. www.sweetshoppedesigns.com also has a newsletter and that they send each week with their specials.
I love doing it digital because everything can be used over and over again!

www.heatheranndesigns.com has they cool quick fill pages that you can buy. I like them for when I want to put a lot of pictures on one page. Although now that I have played with a photoshop I know how to do some of this on my own, but they are a good thing to check out and there is a tutorial telling how to use them.

3. Now that you have some stuff to play with choose a photo or two and then go back to www.shabbyprincess.com for a tutorial, they look a bit daunting but they really will help you, my friend really self taught herself to fdo this just using the tutorials.

My same friend also introduced me to this site
http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/
I haven't look around much on it but it looks like she has some really cool stuff on it. Some of it looks a bit advanced to me but she also has some courses that you can pay for where she teaches you stuff...worth checking out at least.

Another friend mentioned a site where she did a tutorial but I can't remember what it is...maybe it will come to me eventually...but if all else fails to a search, I am sure you will find something.

4. One of my biggest issues was what size to make things, at first I was making 8x10's and having them printed at Costco, however I have recently become a big believer in making books from places like winkflash, snapfish, shutterfly, or the one that Costco has one their site. Truthfully it comes out cheaper to print them as books, especially when they are running specials, and sizewise they are so much smaller to store. But that still leaves me with what size do I make pages in because you will find there are all different sizes of books out there that you can make. Personally I have decided that I will keep making them 8x10's and that I will make them all in a horizontal layout, it is not my favorite all the time but it works much better. But what happens when I am going to put them in an 8x12 book because that is what is on sale (I am all about the sale!) Well I just drag my final page onto an 8x12 page and either leave it white or put a background behind it. This all sounds confusing I know but just call me...I can explain it all.

I think that it is it for now...I have to go get my kids they've been playing at a friend's...I actually got to watch a movie, of my choosing, in the middle of the day!!!! It was wonderful!