Scrapbook Groove is a new monthly digital scrapbooking newsletter, which along with its website at http://www.scrapbookgroove.com, is designed to inspire and connect the growing community of digital scrapbookers. Scrapbook Groove promotes the joy and creativity of digital scrapbooking by featuring innovative layouts, digital photography advice, design tips, contests, freebies and more.

Providing inspiration for digital scrapbook layouts is the main focus of Scrapbook Groove. You’ll find tips on applying photo effects in your layouts, capturing particular moods and textures, creating custom embellishments, and more. Scrapbook Groove also covers a wide-range of technical topics for maximizing your digital scrapbooking experience. You’ll find helpful tips and tutorials for using popular digital scrapbooking software such as Indigo Rose’s Scrapbook MAX and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. You’ll also find informative articles on getting the most out of your digital camera.

Contributors to Scrapbook Groove include professional digital scrapbook designers and the newsletter’s own subscribers. “Scrapbook Groove is an exciting new link in the digital scrapbooking community,” said Marnie Wilson, co-editor of scrapbookgroove.com. “You can just imagine the creativity out there – everyone walks away with exciting new ideas for their scrapbooks!”

Scrapbook Groove’s free monthly newsletter, The Groove, keeps subscribers inspired with even more tips and ideas by turning the spotlight on members of the digital scrapbooking community. For instance, each month The Groove’s ‘Scrapper Profile’ features an outstanding digital scrapbooker for their innovative approach to layout design. The newsletter also hosts a monthly layout design contest based on themes such as ‘Summer Fun’ , ‘Back to School’, and ‘The Holidays’. Winners are featured in the newsletter and receive prizes such as mouse pads and downloadable digital scrapbooking kits.

To help generate further enthusiasm for digital scrapbooking, the scrapbookgroove.com website provides free downloadable content to all subscribers. Freeebie packs include items such as embellishments, backgrounds, borders, and word art.

A free subscription to Scrapbook Groove is available online at http://www.scrapbookgroove.com. Subscriptions include full access to the site, links to free downloadable digital scrapbooking content, and monthly issues of The Groove digital scrapbooking newsletter emailed directly to subscribers in PDF format.

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According to the 2004 National Survey of Scrapbooking in America, one in four households participate in scrapbooking, and sales in the American scrapbooking market were estimated at $ 2.55 billion in 2004. While dedicated scrapbookers spend any where from 10 to 30 hours a month scrapbooking, 70% planned to spend more time on their hobby in the next 12 months. ScrapbookMore.com offers the dedicated scrapbooker, as well as those just getting started, an outlet for helping them to use that time efficiently.

Shopping from the comfort of your own home not only saves a scrapbooker valuable time, but, with ScrapbookMore.com?s discounted prices on favorite scrapbooking materials, flat-rate shipping, free scrapbook layout ideas and free scrapbooking help, it can save them money as well.

ScrapbookMore.com not only offers quality, archival-safe, scrapbook materials priced below retail, but also helpful articles for the beginner to advanced scrapbooker. Topics include getting started, laying out a scrapbook page, choosing an album, scrapbook room organization, using album and page kits, product reviews, free layout ideas and free quotes and titles. ScrapbookMore.com also features special holiday and seasonal products and puts them together in one place so customers won?t have to search the entire catalog for the products they need.

ScrapbookMore.com’s motto: “Customer Service is our #1 priority.” Visit ScrapbookMore.com on the web to learn more about their different services and see what this new online scrapbook store can do for you.

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(The first six tips are listed in the article “Finding Time to Scrapbook Part 1″)

7.  Make your scrapbooking time enjoyable and something you can look forward to.  For some, that may mean time to themselves, where for others it means time to socialize.  For myself, I know that it helps if good food and tea or a Slurpee are involved!  Perhaps for you, scrapbook time is more relaxing if your favourite music or movie is playing while you design your pages.  Whatever it is that will make the time a treat for you will also increase the amount of time that you will dedicate to it.

8.  Take the pressure off yourself!  Scraplifting (that’s scrapbooker speak for copying someone else’s layout) is considered flattery and completely acceptable in most scrapbook circles, so if the creativity juices aren’t flowing, just copy a layout.  Don’t compare yourself to someone else.  I am a fast scrapbooker, but my pages are nowhere near as artistic and intricate as the pages of others.  It would be depressing for me to compare my layouts to theirs and depressing for them to focus on how many pages I had been able to complete compared to themselves.  Instead, celebrate your own accomplishments.  If you’ve already set realistic goals for yourself, that should be easy to do.

9.  Pre-plan your layouts.  Put the photos you will be using for a page, along with the paper, any stickers or embellishments, and a sticky note with a rough sketch or journalling ideas together ahead of time.  Before I go on a weekend retreat (see #12), I lay out all of my pages this way and stack them in a box.  It increases my productivity and makes me feel more organized.  It also cuts back on the amount of “stuff” I have to bring with me.

10.  Have an area to scrapbook.  Most of us are not fortunate enough to have a room set aside just for scrapbooking (though it is an added bonus if you do!), but having an area in your home where there is a clear surface that you can work on such as a coffee table, kitchen table, or desk will enable you to pull out your project and do a page here and there at home.

11.  Get into a routine with a friend or group of friends where you meet to scrapbook on a regular basis.  This will work on two levels.  The routine will become a habit, and having a commitment with friends will ensure that you keep each other accountable.

12.  The hands-down best way that I have found to enable me to work on my scrapbooks is to go away on weekend scrapbook retreats.  I make sure that I do this at least once a year.  I am a fast scrapbooker and by being very organized ahead of time (see #9), I am able to complete between 80 and 100 pages per retreat.  I have to keep that in perspective by saying that as the mom of seven children, when I have a weekend away to scrapbook, I scrapbook!  I don’t sleep much.  It is just as acceptable to go away on the retreat, read a book, sleep in, and complete ten pages.

Good luck and happy scrapbooking!!!

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Over the years scrapbooking has become more and more popular because it is a great way to present your memories. You can choose to do any theme, ranging from family vacations to summer filled days. As a mother I wanted to make a scrapbook of my baby’s first year. A baby’s first birthday is a momentous occasion and what better way can you show off their year, than creating a scrapbook.

Milestones

You can create many pages for your scrapbook by capturing your baby’s milestones. I personally used photos of my son when he was learning to sit up by himself, the first time he ate baby food, his first steps, and of course his first hair cut. For the first hair cut make sure you take a photo before and a photo after so you can really see the end result.

Holidays

The holidays can truly make the greatest scrapbook pages. Make sure to take plenty of photos during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and any other holiday you celebrate. The more photos that you have, the greater options you will be able to choose from. Many craft stores carry pre-packaged and ready-to-use kits with everything you need to create your scrapbook pages. They typically include sheets of decorative paper, stickers, and various embellishments.

Family Vacations

Although family vacations are not remembered by your baby, they will always be memories you will have. Displaying your family vacation photos in your baby’s scrapbook will show your child later in life what fun they had and also make great additions to your scrapbook. There is a wide range of available products that are travel themed for your pages. They offer stickers and pages that are beached themed and specific cities or countries, such as Paris or Mexico.

Professional Photographs

For my son I had professional photographs taken of him every month until he was a year old. I used those photos to separate the months in his scrapbook. In other words, I would use his one month professional photo at the beginning and then I would use the two month photo after all the one month photos were used. I did this as a separator and so that it was easier for someone to know his age at that point.

Everyday Moments

Photos doing ordinary and everyday things are my personal favorite. These are the photos that truly capture who they are. This is where the fun creating a scrapbook really comes in. You can create your pages however you like and use a wide variety of pages, stickers, and embellishments.

Remember that a scrapbook is your project and you can create it however you like. Be as creative as you can. When I was finished with my baby’s first year scrapbook I brought it to his birthday party and laid it out so everyone could see it. Everyone truly enjoyed being able to see him grow through the pages. After the party, make sure you create pages at the end of his first birthday party to conclude your scrapbook.

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If you would like to make powerful scrapbooking layouts, you need to use emotions. The trick is to capture just the right moments in your photographs, and the emotions will shine through onto your layouts.

Scrapbooking is a wonderful way of recording events and special times with our loved ones. You should try and go beyond the public façade, and show how you feel both in good times and bad.

You may say you only want to scrapbook the good times, but good or bad, it is part of life. Try to challenge yourself to express some emotion through the pictures that you use on your layouts. You could show through photographs things like joy, anticipation, love, sadness, loneliness and even foolishness.

Here are some ideas for you to get your emotions through without necessarily writing about them.

To express love people often show people hugging or kissing, but why not try focusing on body language.

Maybe photograph two hands clinging to each other, or an arm hanging casually over someone’s back. You don’t always need to show faces in your photographs.

I did see a lovely idea in a scrapbooking layout that depicted loneliness. It was a photograph of a cat on a decaying garden bench surrounded by nothing but an unkempt garden. He just looked so alone lying there on that bench. The artist used this photograph as her background, and put her other photo’s around this theme. It was very effective.

Anticipation could be depicted by someone doing a bungee jump or just before they come to the ground when they jump off of a ski ramp or out of an airplane.

There is nothing like photographing happy children playing to depict joy. Those little faces tell a story of their own.

Same thing with happiness. A photo graph showing the running legs of children playing could give the reader a feeling of happiness and freedom.

It will be more difficult to find good photographs to underline negative emotions. A photograph of a staircase full of sad people going to work can bring on quite powerful emotions. A subway station can also leave you feeling a little glum, as nobody is smiling. A melancholy mood could be depicted by a photograph of a dark and cloudy day.

Robert Plutchik was a philosopher and he identified eight basic emotions – anticipation, fear, disgust, anger, joy acceptance,surprise and sadness. This list could come in handy when you are thinking about different emotions to portray.

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If you’re an enthusiastic scrapbook creator, you know how fun it can be to use creative scrapbooking techniques to give your scrapbook pages interesting finishes and details. If you have vintage photos to display in your scrapbook, why not add some character to your scrapbook pages by aging them with tea? This will provide the perfect backdrop for your older photos and will really add character to your scrapbook.

Aging paper for your scrapbook using tea couldn’t be simpler and can be quite satisfying when you see the beautiful results. Here’s how to quickly and effectively age scrapbook paper using tea:

Brew a Batch of Strong Tea

Three black teabags steeped in two cups of water is a good ratio. You don’t want your tea to be too weak or your results will be disappointingly subtle. Leave the tea bags immersed in the water for about 45 minutes to get a strong color. Pour your prepared tea into a large, flat bowl that can accommodate your sheet of paper.

Decide How Heavy Your Want Your Stain to Be

If you want a light stain, simply immerse the paper in the tea and quickly remove it. The longer the paper remains in the tea mixture, the darker your stain will be.

Allow Your Paper to Dry

After removing the paper, lay it on a dry paper towel and allow it to dry. Since wet paper has a tendency to curl up during the drying process, you’ll need to apply a heavy object such as a book to weigh the paper down. If you don’t want to wait until it dries, you can a piece of heavy, clear vinyl on top to protect your paper and iron it on a low setting.

Why not get creative when you age your scrapbook paper?

Use a moist tea bag to randomly blot your paper with tea or lightly rub your tea bag over the surface of the paper you want to age. If you want a very mottled effect, use lose tea leaves that have been moistened with water and sprinkle them on top of your paper. Let your paper dry. You can further enhance the effects using selected scrapbook inks to add additional interest.

Using this scrapbooking technique, you’ll be able to create a vintage backdrop for any of your vintage photos or older paper collectibles. This procedure for adding age to paper can also be used for artistic paper collages. It’s a simple procedure for which you’ll find endless
applications.

Have fun experimenting with this creative scrapbooking idea. You’ll never settle for boring, ordinary paper again.

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The Cricut brand is no stranger to scrapbookers and the Criucut Design Studio software can save a scrapbooker time and money. The Cricut Design Studio is a software appliation that connects your computer to your Cricut machine and helps with designing layouts and manipulating images.

What is the Cricut Design Studio for?

The Cricut Design Studio is an easy way to design a cutting layout by organizing everything on the on-screen cutting mat. You can combine shapes and letters from any Circuit cartridge available, rotate doodads, and resize shapes. You can also “weld” letters together (this cannot be done without the software). Cricut.com provides updates to owners of the Design Studio software via downloads from their website.  Cricut Design Studio works with both the original Cricut machines and Cricut Expressions.

Installation:
Cricut Design Studio is easy to install. Simply load the CD into the tray, and follow the on-screen instructions. The software installs in less than five minutes.

Features:
The onscreen cutting mat is the main feature of this software. I’m a very visual person, and for me, the Cricut Design Studio is a great way to visualize what you’re doing before you actually cut the paper.  I’ve wasted so many pretty scrapbooking papers cutting designs that ended up being the wrong size, or just didn’t work with my creative vision for the page. The program offers a “preview” option, so you can see your design exactly how it will appear on the paper before sending it to the machine for cutting.

With every tool, there is a learning curve, and the Cricut Design Studio is no different. While the software is initially easy to use and operate, some features might frustrate users. For example, the “weld” feature wasn’t working properly – it was still cutting each letter individually. After ripping a few hairs out and wasting several sheets of paper, I found out that I needed to select “weld” for each letter individually. You don’t need to be computer guru to use this software, but there are a few nitpicky options you’ll need to learn.

Cricut Design Studio has a searchable library of every image and font letter design Cricut has on all of its cartridges, making it easy to find what you’re looking for.

Product Specifications:
Included in the box is the Circuit Design Studio software CD-ROM, a 10-foot USB cable, and a Cricut mousepad.

Price & Availablity:
Cricut Design Studio software can be found for around -. You can purchase this software at most craft or scrapbooking stores, or online at Cricut.com, Amazon, or eBay.

Cons
You can only cut shapes and letters from the Cricut cartridges you own. For me, this posed a problem when I first got the software. At the time, I only owned two Cricut cartridges. After searching the Design Studio library, I saw so many other cute fonts and doodads that I went out and bought more cartridges. Buying this software proved to be an expensive investment. If you can exhibit more self-control than me, you’ll be fine!

You also can only load the software on one computer. I recommend installing Cricut Design Studio on a laptop, so you can move it around with your Cricut or take it along to scrapbooking parties. If you are installing on a desktop computer, make sure you have space available to setup your Cricut machine.

Currently, Cricut Design Studio is only available for PCs (Windows operating systems). It is not available for the MAC.

Final thoughts:
I recommend this software to any avid Cricut user. Welding letters and having complete control over the patterns and doodads was very important to me. With the digital cutting mat, I waste less paper—if you saw how much paper I was wasting before getting Cricut Design Studio, I’m sure this software has already paid for itself! If you’re interested in this software, but aren’t quite sure if you want to buy it, Cricut offers a free trial download on their website. Happy scrapbooking!

If you thought digital scrapbooking looked complicated, so did I. When I first came across the term while searching for scrapbooking stuff online, I gave it a wide berth – until eventually I looked a bit closer, and was relieved to find lots of help avail
Video Rating: 3 / 5

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For a personal computer rookie as well as a veteran, pages of e-books are regarded as to become a huge work,but by using 500 Scrapbooking Sketches, beautiful personalized pages will not be a dream!As it is possible to see in the name, 500 Scrapbooking Sketches can offer you with a pool of500 different but amazing layouts.

You just choose one of those programs laid in advance for you, you simply require to choose 1 and place in your images.
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The huge quantity of layouts not just saves your valuable time but additionally pull you out off the hopelessabyss with the sense of pc illiteracy. You might have to acknowledge that most of men and women are not that geniuses, but ordinary people like you and me. The demand for Michelango-like creativeness always drives us crazy. Feeling incapable undermines our confidence and destroys the happiness of our lives lives.

After choosing up the suitable template, all you’ve to complete is filling within the blanks in your very own fashion. Many hundreds of layouts can inspire your own creativity, sparking your creativity.
Concentrate on writing feedback and developing the shades and patterns of one’s titles,
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Concentrate on writing feedback and developing the shades and patterns of one’s titles,
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ezinearticles.com – New to Digital Scrapbooking? Not sure which software to use? Here you can understand 3 types to consider: * Scrapbook Layout Programs * Photo editing software * Online photo album creation services

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Everyone loves a unique gift, especially family. Capture the best memories of the year in a personal scrapbook calendar. Have 10 people to make them for and want to save time–and money? Read on! 

Things You’ll Need:

Scrapbook supplies

A nearby office supply store

Photos of the family from throughout the year 

Step 1

First, gather together all of your photos from the last year. I myself, after scrapbooking pages, put all my extras in a folder. That way, at the end of the year, I have already printed photos to use for the yearly calendar that all of the family has come to love! 

Step 2

Figure out what pictures you want to use for what month. For example, if little Bobby’s birthday is in April, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do that month’s design with photos from his last birthday party. Follow that same guideline for other holidays–previous Halloween costumes can be for October, Valentine photos for February, etcetera etcetera. 

Step 3

Scrap your pages on a landscape (wide, not tall) 8 1/2 by 11 paper. Not 12×12–trust me on this. Do one for each month, and then be sure to make a cover page for the front of the calendar. 

Step 4

Take your finished scrapped pages to your local OfficeMax or Office Depot, or other friendly office supply store that has a copying department. I prefer OfficeMax myself, as they always have sales on their calendars near the Christmas holiday. Ask to have a yearly calendar done, and let them know what order your pages go in (in the event you don’t have the month incorporated in the page). 

Step 5

In about 24 hours (depending on their workload), you will have numerous calendars that are exactly the same, but you only scrapped once! They come out looking great, and they’re perfect for the person who has everything! But watch out–sometimes, these become a family favorite, and you’ll be EXPECTED to do them each year! 

TIPS AND TRICKS 

Make your designs pop–use lots of contrasting colors, and make full use of the paper! 

Don’t put anything important too close to the edges–they may get cut off a little while processing at the copy department. Keep about an inch border before adding any special details. 

Sara Haley is a freelancer currently living in Nebraska with her husband and two children, along with numerous four-legged friends.  She writes for Bukisa, eHow, and her own personal blog at sarakhaley.blogspot.com.  She has written for numerous publications both online and off, and continues to enjoy sharing her knowledge and love for life with others.

Simply put, a “simple scrapbook” is a back-to-basics album, usually smaller than a traditional scrapbook in size, which may focus on everyday life or an event you want to separate from your traditional albums. Everything about the simple scrapbook is toned-down from traditional scrapbooking: scale, design, even products used.

There is often more structure to a simple scrapbook – look at it as a book that tells a story. You will want to include a title page – this will contain a title for your book, a date (be it an event date or just a month or year), and possibly a dedication if the book is a gift; this is also where you set the theme for the book – style and color scheme.

Two pages you may want to include are an introduction page and a table of contents. These pages are at your own discretion – you may not need a table of contents if you’re focusing on a single event, just as you may not need an introduction if your title page wraps up what your scrapbook is about (for example: “Tony and Andrea’s Wedding”). If you choose to include these pages, they should follow the theme set forth on the title page.

Section pages introduce the different sections of your book (if you’re dividing it up); the pages should also follow your theme. Filler pages fill the sections, or (if you’re not dividing) make up the bulk of your scrapbook, telling your story. You may also want a clever closing page: a photo or statement that sums up your scrapbook.

If you decide to try making a simple scrapbook, you will need to create a design for your album. You should know what you are creating the album: are you celebrating an event? Will it be a gift? You will have to decide on a size and style of album, and how you will organize it: chronologically, as a list, question and answer, or theme, among other ideas. You will need to decide which of the aforementioned pages you will use, and design a color scheme for use throughout the album. Based on the color scheme, you can decide what kinds of accents you will use on the pages.

When you’re comfortable with the design of your album, you can start arranging your photos for display on the pages and determining how to display your journaling. At this point, you are ready to start working on your scrapbook.

The beauty of a simple scrapbook is that you can actually finish it. Where traditional scrapbooks are often on-going projects, a simple scrapbook is often a set event or theme with a finite end point. Simple scrapbooks are also quick to create – you often spend more time developing the theme than putting together the actual book.

If you think you want to dive into scrapbooking, check out these articles:

Get Started Scrapbooking Today!
Start Scrapbooking Now – Tools of the Trade
Set Up a Scrapbooking Crop

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