Digital Scrapbooking For the Ages

For most kids who have grown up with the internet, mastering the art of the digital scrapbook can be easily accomplished with a little assistance. That idea can be a difficult idea to fathom for adults, considering some of us are still learning how to properly save a JPEG.

For kids, working on computers and with the internet is nothing new - in fact, it's practically ingrained within their DNA. Helping them create fun digital scrapbooks on the computer is an excellent way for your child to continue to master the internet and to create some fun art projects to boot.

Get Focused

Help your child understand why he is creating a digital scrapbook in the first place to help him want to see the project through. Create a list of questions for your child such as Who, Where and Why? These questions can help the child start thinking about the purpose behind the digital scrapbook.

Who? Who is going in the scrapbook? Grandma? Daddy? Friends from school?

Where? Where should the scrapbook be located in time and space? Is it in a magical forest? New York City? At the North Pole? These ideas can help your child start categorizing to create the...

Why? Why are you making the digital scrapbook? Is it to show to friends, bring to show and tell? Give as a present to Daddy? Once your child understands the why, it will be easier for him to focus and not get overwhelmed by the hundreds of digital scrapbooking ideas and colorful digital scrapbooking layouts.

Shop Around

Once you know your child's theme, go through the paid and free scrapbooking sites on your own and pick out the scrapbook pages that match up with the theme your child has picked. Bookmark several of these pages and let your child pick out one to three choices, depending on the aptitude of your child.

Searching for these types of pieces ahead of time solves many common problems. Typically, when confronted with the hundreds of websites and pieces to choose from, a child will get overwhelmed or too excited, wanting to download and purchase everything. Then the project becomes about fighting over downloads rather than making the project you were planning on.

Find Tutorials

Depending on the age of your child, pull up some of the easy to understand tutorials found on many of the digital scrapbooking sites. These can help guide your child through simple to understand activities, such as cropping a photo to fit into a layout.

However, use your teaching wisely. Boring your child to tears will defeat the fun. Sometimes, the best way to teach is to talk your child through where to click on the keyboard and let him pick it up as he goes.

As with anything, patience is key. When you work on a digital scrapbook with your child, start small and be encouraging. Don't be surprised if he has a knack for it and ultimately, ends up teaching you new tricks.

Marie Perrow is a scrapbooking queen extraordinaire. She has been scrapbooking since she was 5. Her scrapbooking are gaining immense Find out more about her scrapbook layout, scrapbooking tools and scrapbook here.

Cropping and Matting Your Scrapbook Photos

There are many different aspects of making a scrapbook. These different things are what make a scrapbook unique and what make it different from an ordinary photo album. When it comes to these things, cropping and matting are important steps that help make your photos look great in your scrapbook for many years to come.

Cropping refers to removing unneeded background from your photos so that they look better or the photo only focuses on the most important part of the scene. Matting refers to putting a border around the photo, similar to a picture frame. This is usually done with paper, cardstock or matting materials.

Both of these techniques can help your scrapbook photos look their absolute best. The images will pop from your scrapbook and it can even add to the theme and the overall appeal of the book.

Cropping can be simple such as the type of digital cropping that is often used to edit a photo or it can be done with fancy shapes and styles to make the photo more interesting for a scrapbook. There are even scrapbooking tools to help you do this.

If you want to crop your photo, you need to first select the photo that you want to use. Then you want to choose a shape that's going to flatter the photograph that you have chosen. When cropping, you want to be sure you don't remove anything important from the background. Things like cars, houses or the background of where you';re at can be just as important as the subject on the photo in many cases.

You can also find scrapbooking templates around to help you with cropping your photos. To use these templates, you just place them over your photo kind of like a stencil. 'Then you trace it lightly with a pencil and all you have to do is cut along the line you've traced.

Another way to crop is to trim around the edge of the photo to make the photo smaller but without losing the original shape of the photo. You can also use a ruler to help keep your edges straight when you crop.

When it comes to matting, you can use cardstock to make a border for your photos. This gives your scrapbook photos a border like a picture frame. You can use mats in one color, in assorted colors and in other designs and themes to match the theme of your scrapbook. You can also use different types of scissors to cut your mats to make more designs.

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How to Make a Disney Scrapbook Album

Coming home from a Disney vacation doesn't have to be the end of your trip. Vacation memories can last forever in a Disney scrapbook album.

You have to preserve your vacation memories in order for them to live on. You'll always want to remember hugging Mickey Mouse and eating ice cream on Main Street USA. Your Disney scrapbooking album will be your guide to your own memories. Making an album requires taking many pictures while on vacation.

Be sure to snap shots of all of your fun activities. Try taking more candid shots than posed shots as that's where the true magic lies. Upon returning home, get all your pictures together by printing them out or having your film developed. You can then choose a theme for your Disney scrapbook album or do a random layout.

Spend time focusing on what each page should look like, and then go for it. It's totally your call, so have fun. One important thing to note here is that your Disney scrapbook album won't design itself.

You have to set aside time to work on your album, and the sooner you sit down to scrap after returning from vacation, the better as your memories will still be fresh. Once you have the designs and layout ideas you want to use, then start putting the pieces together.

Be sure to journal, or write a bit, about each picture so that youll remember exactly what was happening when the picture was taken. Soon, you'll have a finished Disney scrapbook album. What a perfect souvenir! Your finished album will delight your family and friends as they re-live your vacation. Your Disney scrapbook album will allow your memories to live forever.

Learn more about making a Disney scrapbook album.

Different Types Of Scrapbooking

Overall, there are many methods of scrapbooking that a person can utilize to document their memories. Each depends upon how creative or organized the scrapbook maker wants to be. It really doesn’t matter if you are creative or ‘artsy’, anyone can create a scrapbook of memories. Each scrapbook is reflective of the personality of the person who created it.

1. Standard Scrapbooking – Creating pages and placing them in a scrapbook album with page protectors. Scrapbooks used to only come in two sizes 8x10 and 12x12. Check out your local scrapbook store to see the many different sizes of scrapbooks available now.

2. Book-making Scrapbooking – Using a binding system, creating covers and pages with cardboard and embellishing the pages with paper, ribbons, stickers, pictures and other keepsakes. The binding can be done using a three ring binder, binding rings, ribbons, brackets, staples or spiral binders. Really the options for binding are only limited by the creativity of the scrapbooker.

3. Digital Scrapbooking – Creating pages online using digital images and software rather than purchasing individual embellishments. Many people use these to create pages to upload to their blogs or to print and place in a book. Many software packages are also compatible with online websites like Shutterfly.com and Snapfish.com and allow you to upload your pages and create a printed book of your creations.

4. Creating Picture Books Online – There are many different websites that allow you to use their templates to create a picture book of memories. You upload your pictures to their website, paste them into the prepared templates available based on the number of pictures you would like on the page and then add text to your page to personalize. There are many different photo and self-publishing websites available that offer this service.

5. Blogging or Scrapblogging – There are many people who utilize web logs to maintain a journal or to document the happenings of their family. These blogs are highly personalized. Starting out you can use a standardized template, but once you are comfortable with the services provided, you can upload your own creation to make your blog more personal.

6. Creating presentations – Using presentation software to create personal presentations on the computer is very easy. You can use templates included with the software or go online and find more individualized templates for creating presentations. The nice thing about using presentation software is you can add videos, and you can add sound and transitions between your pages. You can even automate a presentation to scroll through the entire presentation ‘hands-free’ once the file is accessed. When choosing a presentation software, be sure to choose one that creates presentations that don’t require those viewing to necessarily own the software you used to create it.

7. Picture slide shows – There are websites online that allow you upload your pictures and organize them into slide shows. Many of these sites provide the service free of charge and provide links so that you can post your slide shows to your blog or even to post them on social networking websites.

See the links I have provided here on my web page to find your local store, and also to find online web sites that allow you to scrapbook online.

Taken From Examiner.com

Mother's Day Brings On ... A Scrapbook Of Memories

By ANNIE CHARNLEY EVELAND of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Our mother, Frances Elizabeth “Libby” Graves McTaggart, was born in the midst of the Great Depression. Mom died March 12, ironically amid another serious recession. She was 78.

Her illness with ovarian cancer and death in a seven-day span surprised the daylights out of my three brothers and me.

The cancer probably developed for a year, her doctors said, but none of us knew about it until the very end. It took time to digest.

It was weeks before I could write her obituary. Brother Will and I spent about 16 hours the weekend after she died sorting through her papers to find out the state of her affairs and glean information for an obit.

A bio I had requested my parents and grandparents fill out 25 years ago turned out to be my best resource.

I discovered several things in the excavation.

It’s been an archaeological dig of sorts. Deconstructing Mom, brother Scott called it. The unorganized layers led back through news clippings, photos and letters.

I learned there’s meaning in every photo we take but some of her very old, unidentified photos have lost their significance because we don’t recognize the faces or places. Conversely, identified and dated photos give us a history, a connection to our roots and continuity.

In addition to her contributions to urban planning, the national, state and district political scenes and the Washington state Department of Transportation, Mom also had a creative influence on her children.

She was an exceedingly skilled sketch artist. We all coveted her paintings, especially a watercolor of neighbor Miss Cooey’s cherry tree Mom made while looking out the window, seated at our dining room table.

She sewed a lot. She made red and green fabric banners for Christmas that said Bonne Annee and Noel and stuffed cloth character dolls of Santa, Mrs. Claus and Santa’s elves for my brothers and me.

One Christmas she made an Old West town of shops out of hand-painted cardboard boxes. They bore our gifts and had shop signs such as: Scotty’s Dry Goods, Annie’s Millinery, Billy’s Barber Shop and Bobby’s Feed Store.

She was a whiz with papier-m…ch/. As den mother in the space-struck early 1960s for Scott’s Cub Scout troop members, she helped them construct a puppet theater with a scrolling painted backdrop for scene changes and a riveting story line for the Martian and scout puppets.

I pined for a child-sized kitchen in which to play so she marched off to the lumber store, purchased the materials and whipped up me-sized cabinets, a refrigerator, a stove with knobs that turned and a sink with a little faucet. It was awesome.

She let our imaginations run wild in the backyard. We camped as pioneers in a cavernous, smelly, old canvas tent and built tree forts in the cherry and apple trees.

My particular favorite was digging to China. I was determined to bring back Chinese gowns, fans, tea sets and dishes after being fueled by the discovery of a broken crockery chip in our excavation behind the garage.

She might not have said it, but she probably thought, “Here’s the shovel. Knock yourselves out.”

She could and did frustrate us with a standard line that applied in almost every circumstance when she didn’t want to say no: “We’ll see, dear,” she’d soothe. That ended many a discussion.

Once we got past the teenage angst, the chafing against apron strings, the yearning for independence, the impermeable facade, Mom’s best attributes stand out.

Sorting through her possessions, I came across a collection of correspondence.

Among those missives was a Mother’s Day card I sent that reads: “Sally Johnson: Worst Mom Ever.”

As she runs past two bewildered children, the mother waves scissors over her head as she cries, “Wheeeee!! Running with scissors is fun!! Well, goodbye kids!! I’m meeting a stranger for candy, then jumping off a bridge with my friends.”

Mom and I both guffawed over that card.

“I wanted to make sure you know how much it’s meant to me to have you as my Mom,” I wrote her in a letter that accompanied that card in 2007.

All the laughter we had growing up, imbued me with a good sense of humor, I told her. Because of the environment in which we were raised, I have an appreciation for music, books, the theater, science, history, research and writing.

Mom’s role modeling in those early years made me a reasonably well-rounded person who cares about her children and family and has regard for others.

Because of the ethics and values Mom imparted, I care about my home, my work, the state, nation and world and being responsible.

I am inquisitive because I saw that in Mom. I can love others because I was loved at home.

Most importantly, I don’t run with scissors, take candy from strangers or jump off the Aurora Bridge (in Seattle where we grew up) just because everyone else does.

And Mom can rest easy because I especially don’t leave home with anything but clean underwear.

I carry her in my heart every day.

Taken From Union-Bulletin.com