CONCORD, N.H. – Wendy Armstrong won’t confess how much money she used to spend on scrapbooking supplies, but she does admit nearly kicking her daughter out of her nursery to make more room for the piles of paper and decorative doodads.
Two years later, Armstrong is ready to get rid of her collection altogether. But she hasn’t given up on scrapbooking. Rather, she’s joining a growing number of scrapbookers who have gone digital.
Armstrong, 43, now creates all of her scrapbook pages entirely on her computer.
“All of a sudden I didn’t totally panic about finishing my layouts like I did with paper scrapping because I never really had to finish,” said Armstrong, who has completed 240 pages in just more than a year.
Digital scrapbooking is a fast-growing offshoot of the $2.5 billion scrapbooking industry.
For many, the main appeal is flexibility: Photos and embellishments can be repositioned, resized or re-colored. And while printing pages can be expensive, digitally created “papers” can be used over and over, and many coordinated kits can be downloaded for free from dozens of Web sites. One of the most popular sites, Scrapbook Bytes, has grown to nearly 40,000 registered members since it went online in 2003.
Some traditional paper companies now offer digital kits on CD, and computer-generated layouts are making their way into scrapbooking magazines. .
“It’s made it much more accessible to people who don’t have that inclination for crafts,” said Stacy Julian, founding editor of Simple Scrapbooks magazine,” but maybe they work with a computer all day long and they feel much more comfortable with the technical aspect of it.”
That was the case for Tiffany Brand, of Dover, a former computer teacher and school technology coordinator. She started paper scrapbooking five years ago but used her computer from the start to print journaling on her pages. Now she uses Adobe Photoshop Elements to create her scrapbooks and has taught a class on digital scrapbooking.
She brought her laptop with her on a recent trip to Hawaii and spent the long plane ride scrapbooking.
“I never considered myself a crafty person; I considered myself a technical person” she said. “Don’t be afraid to play around. It may be intimidating at first, but it’s very forgiving.”
On the Net:
http://www.scrapbook-bytes.com
http://www.shabbyelements.com
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com
http://www.simplescrapbooksmag.com
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