Resources for Digital Scrapbooking

I had a lovely day yesterday, scrapbooking with some on-line friends at a LSS. (local scrapbook store for those of you out of the scrapbooking world) One of my favorite things about doing this is meeting new friends. I was the only one scrapbooking digitally, so the questions rolled. I found out that two of the women have the Storybook Creator software that I use, but don’t know how to use it! Yikes. You’re missing out!

Here are a few links for you to get you started. Some of these blogs and websites are for general digi-scrapping and some are Storybook Creator specific.  Please note that I am not a Creative Memories Consultant, nor have never been one! I just like to share the wealth where I can. It is also important to me to support other bloggers by getting the word out about their blogs. 

Cathie Owens has a blog that involves the use of Storybook Creator. She’s a great teacher and often posts freebies. Check out her side bar for links to CM Webinars for software instruction.

Write, Click, Scrapbook is a collective of designers and scrapbook gurus. Most, if not all of them, came from Simple Scrapbooks.

Cathy Zielskie is a graphic designer and scrapbooker with a fabulous sense of humor and an amazing way of teaching. She is now designing templates. Her templates are for use with Photoshop and PSE, but if you use other software, you can use her templates for design inspiration in the form of a sketch.

Ella is an on-line publishing company. This is the baby of Lain Ehman and Angie Lucas. With contributions from lots of people in the industry, they put out e-books that you can purchase and download. You can print them, bind them, alter them, or save paper and leave them on your hard drive. Each month, an e-zine comes out free of charge. (check out January, I have a layout featured!)

Creative Memories has a few blogs attached to their website. Check them out here and here. There are more blogs associated with CM, go to their website to check them out.

I often grab free kits from designers on the Internet. If you are new to this game, I have a few bits of advice for you.

1. Don’t download everything you see just because it is free. You will quickly amass a bunch of stuff you will never use.

2. Unzip everything and file it the same day you download it. Winrar is a great program to help with this. Please note that there is a different version of this program if you have a 64 bit operating system.

3. When you download something, take 30 seconds to leave the designer a comment and say thank you. Designing is hard work and takes lots of time, take a small amount of your time to say thank you.

4. When you use a kit and post your layout on the web in a gallery or on your blog, please credit the designer. It is also appreciated when you contact the designer to tell her/him that you used the kit. It is helpful for them to see their product in use.

The Daily Digi is one of my favorite sites. This site has no advertising and is supported by their monthly set of kits called The Digi Files. Each month, for $5, you can buy this set of kits. This is a fantastic deal and a great way to expose yourself to new designers. I just bought December’s kit and it is fabulous!

Simple Scrapper---fantastic resource

Scrapping Sisters—for all of you CTMH fans, these gals used to be paper scrappers. They share amazing kits and often feature layouts that are similar to the ones in the CTMH idea books.

Digi designs by Nicole- one of my all time favorite designers. Check out her sidebars for links to her store and the on-line community attached to it.

I’ll post a few more in the next few days. I need coffee and Jazzercise time is quickly approaching. Happy Scrapping!