Digital Scrapbooking

For my mom's birthday, I printed up pages from the digital scrapbook I made of the babies' first year. During that crazy, crazy 12 months, I managed to create a 150ish page book of images of the babies on a program from Hallmark. It was both hard & easy. I printed it up, and then sort of left it. Babies got into it when we moved here to Shreveport and got the pictures all out of order but I just stuck it in a box and then didn't mess with it. I've been taking lots of pictures, but I haven't been scrapbooking.

When I printed out the images for my mom, I looked at them and thought of how precious this time was, this book that I made which highlights special moments of that first year. How things can be forgotten and the details fade over time. Yes I have multiple versions of the photos on various places, but you distill an image in a scrapbook page. You type out dates, special details that could be forgotten over time.


So. What you're probably guessing is true-- I've decided to get back to doing the scrapbooking thing. I bought a new program which is specifically designed for digital scrapbooks, and you would be amazed at the amount of websites out there with special graphics and designers for this kind of thing. They are gorgeous, and could run into lots of cash if one were so inclined. Luckily, a lot of them also give out freebies, often as much as once a week. So I spent a bit of time this weekend downloading some of those things, and gathering up the stuff I had from last time I did this.


Last night I made a couple of new pages. The next book is going to be something like "Toddler Years" since I will need to cover everything since the last one. So it'll be images from years after the 1st birthday to 3ish. I am both excited and apprehensive because I know how much time these kinds of things can eat up. But if I'm just working on them while I sit and watch TV, it's not like I'm taking time away from other, more important activities. Maybe do a page or so a day. But it is fun to go back through those pictures that I hadn't seen in a while.


This is a screenshot of one page I did yesterday. Cool, huh? :) I swear the pictures were not posed-- she was really being that adorable. All the graphics, the "paper" in the background, etc, are freebies I got from an awesome digital scrapbook site. It's made with the new program, and I think it's pretty spiffy.

Anyway, this page is just a beginning. When I was taking those pictures of the girl, I could just "feel" the page that they would make. And Maia loved it. It's a start.