by Linda | Mar 20, 2013 | DIY printables
The Pixel and Paper Series highlights digital techniques and products for scrapbookers like you and me. I believe that everyone should consider digital elements to be a part of their scrapbooking toolbox, so let’s learn together what the possibilities are. Each week, I’ll be sharing the opinion of a real-life scrapbooker to reveal how they use digital in their scrapbooking. Each post will also offer a freebie download to help you get started on your pixel and paper journey. Enjoy!
Introducing… Ali Edwards
If you are a scrapbooker, you probably know Ali Edwards as one of the gurus in the industry. Seriously, there are so many people that follow her blog and have journeyed along with her scrapbooking story. There’s no doubt that her philosophy, techniques, designs and thoughts have impacted the industry and community of scrapbookers. From projects like December Daily and One Little Word to a multitude of products and published books (Amazon link)…
Ali is definitely what you could call celebrity.
I was immediately attracted to Ali’s design and style, but also her philosophy and thoughtful process of scrapbooking. It’s always interesting to follow along her process and join in with the various memory keeping projects she embarks upon. She offers a lot of information on her website and even an intro to digital scrapbooking. I always find myself inspired and wanting to scrapbook and I suppose that is why so many follow her blog. So I had to ask Ali about how she personally uses paper and digital tools…
Ali says:
Just about every layout/project I do incorporates both my computer and paper scrapbooking products. I love that they work together so very well in helping me to get my stories told.
My process ususally begins by opening my photos in Photoshop before printing. It’s there that I add my digital word art, frames, or journaling directly onto my photos. From there I print my photos here at home (either on an Epson PictureMate Show printer or an Epson R2000 over-sized printer) and then add them either to Project Life or to a cardstock paper layout.
I also print out digital Project Life journaling cards and add those to Project Life.
Digital and paper go hand in hand
I think that Ali is a great example of a scrapbooker who uses everything around her to create in her own unique style. From digital to paper, techniques, inks, sprays, various products, graphic design… it all goes together and gets interpreted through her lens.
via Ali’s blog
If you take a look at her layouts, you’ll notice how much variety there is and often you can tell what is digitally printed by her at home or what is manufactured product.
via Ali’s blog
The idea is that digital and paper go hand in hand. There’s no reason not to use the digital designs and tools at your disposal!
via Ali’s blog
Try it for yourself
I recently created a piece of graphic word art for a layout about my newborn son, so decided to share it with all of you. It’s definitely a bit in the style of Ali Edwards, in terms of being a graphic clean style. You can use the color version directly or alter and color using the black and white PNG file. In fact, it would be cool to clip different pattern papers to various parts or use a digital cutter perhaps to cut the design out? Have fun and happy memory keeping!
Download BTP_TheSmallestThings
If you like printables, be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter for new designs, links to freebies and the latest from yours truly.
by Linda | Mar 13, 2013 | DIY printables
The Pixel and Paper Series highlights digital techniques and products for scrapbookers like you and me. I believe that everyone should consider digital elements to be a part of their scrapbooking toolbox, so let’s learn together what the possibilities are. Each week, I’ll be sharing the opinion of a real-life scrapbooker to reveal how they use digital in their scrapbooking. Each post will also offer a freebie download to help you get started on your pixel and paper journey. Enjoy!
Introducing… Loredana Bucaria
After moving to Italy, I started exploring Italian blogs as well and stumbled upon Loredana Bucaria. She’s a very prolific scrapbooker who says that it’s a part of her lifestyle, not just a hobby. She blogs in Italian and English, so I find it helpful for learning the language as well. From teaching classes around the world to creating projects for Sizzix – I was immediately drawn to the variety of tools she used in her memory keeping and wanted to invite her to share.
Lory says:
Digital and paper are only different tools for a common goal! I want to say more – I love to add some digital elements to my scrapbook pages or projects, printing them for example. I use digital brushes for example on my photos or I print and cut them to make project life tags or journaling spots. I am both of them – I love both of them and I don’t think that they are separated areas of scrapbooking, they come together 🙂
From digital to paper
I think that we often forget that digital elements can be easily transformed into paper elements for our scrapbooking. From digital stickers to brushes to graphics and kits. Print and use, especially great for project life and journaling cards in general. There are so many designs out there and it’s instant gratification, because you can find whatever you need, purchase and print all in a few minutes!
Let’s take a look at a page Lory created for us…
Title: photography class
Materials:
patterned papers: kesi’art and ki memories
printables : studio calico
stamps: studio calico
embellishments: studio calico kits, wash tape, jenni bowlin, american crafts, ki memories, tattered angels.
tools: sizzix big shot and thinklits border
About the page:
Hello everyone! I am so honored to have received a lovely invitation from Linda to know what I think about digital and traditional scrapbooking and how they can be mixed together! I find that they are perfect together because you can create your own little embellishments, cut out some tiny tags and place them around your page to give it a cool touch and a lovely meaning to your photo.
So play and have fun mixing many different ways to use digital scrapbooking in your traditional pages 🙂
Loredana Bucaria bio:
Hello everyone I am Lory from Italy. I am a so funny and silly girl of the south of Italy, I love the sun of my city, I am a life lover, I love to tell stories about my everyday life.
I knew scrapbooking in 2003 thanks a friend and a little journey in a Funfair Park where I was actracted by a scrapbooking book full of colors and of die cuts ! Since then I made a long internet research about this hobby and I was really lucky to discover a new wonderful world !
Since then my life is changed ! Scrapbooking is become my lifestyle,it helped me in bad moments, like my dad’s death, I met new good friends around the world by internet , all thanks to scrapbooking.
I love scrapbooking because it makes me happy, free, with the scrapbooking I forget all the ordinary worries, all the bad thoughts and only the page, the photos, the story about the photo exist ! I loves to be sitted down on my chair ,close to door of my scraproom and be in my scrapbook space with music in background to scrapbook her pages full of colors, of several and sometimes unusually materials. All for fun and for relaxing ! I have a big dream : to can teach around the world, it should change my life, I’d do what I really want to do! In Italy I have an online website and I have organized an international convention of scrapbooking and mixed media for three years (2008-2010) knowing the most famopus scrapbookers and enjoying so much everything!It was a dream came true! I am solar, joyful, full of things to do but I love my everyday life even if something is not like I would.I’ve got married last july with the love of my life and now I have a new so cute home that I improve day by day.I love my life even if I am not a Hollywood star!LOL
I love to play with colors, the paper smell, the little things to can use! I can define my style colorful and pretty, clean and full of little details!:) I love to play with paper! Currently I am in the following design team: Sizzix UK, Bella Boulevard, Chic note Tags, I work for Cèline Navarro’s blog and for a uk magazine. I am crazy for letters stickers, labels stickers, kraft paper and envelopes and I can keep saying a lot of things I adore in this magical world!
I love scrapbooking so much, that’s all, Scrapbooking is my life and I hope one day to can come at the CHA. I love the colors , the smell of the papers, I adore to touch and to play with embellishments, looking at them thousand of times and being happy to have them in my hands, It’s an amazing feeling that I can feel when I create! I really really hope to can be chosen 🙂
I have a blog : www.lovescraplife.typepad.com that is my happy place! The place where I wrote about me, my life, my projects, my everyday life, my travels, my adventures! It’s my lovely place. A place where you will can find a lot of inspirations and you will laugh out loud with me of me 🙂 I am so ironic! Come and take a cup of coffee with me 🙂 It would be a big pleasure!
Lory
Try it for yourself
I love how Lory incorporated printed items in her page and you can’t even tell what was digital or not. It’s amazing the power we have in our hands today. To help you try out using printables in your scrapbooking, download the everyday sampler pack below and have fun memory keeping!
Download BTP_EverydaySampler
If you like printables, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter for new designs, links to freebies and the latest news.
by Linda | Feb 27, 2013 | DIY printables
The Pixel and Paper Series highlights digital techniques and products for scrapbookers like you and me. I believe that everyone should consider digital elements to be a part of their scrapbooking toolbox, so let’s learn together what the possibilities are. Each week, I’ll be sharing the opinion of a real-life scrapbooker to reveal how they use digital in their scrapbooking. Each post will also offer a freebie download to help you get started on your pixel and paper journey. Enjoy!
Introducing… Lain Ehmann from LayoutADay.com
A veteran in the scrapbooking industry, Lain is the leader of the Scrap Happy community and blogs at LayoutADay.com offering a whole bunch of online scrapbooking events and classes. I’ve participated in Layout A Day (LOAD) before and find it the most inspiring experience. It might seem a bit much to scrap every day for a month, but it truly allows you to discover your style. The intense month of scrapping forces you to boil down to the essentials of what scrapbooking really is for you – I loved my experience!
So I had to ask Lain what she thought about digital tools for scrapbooking. She’s primarily a paper scrapper, but certainly has a great perspective.
Lain says:
I don’t like ANY kind of divisions. We’re all doing the same thing – memorializing our family and our memories. HOW we do that does not matter. We will have more and more tools at our disposal over the coming years.
I love using digital elements to create journaling cards for my pages. I use Photoshop Elements to resize and customize these elements for my pages. Then I print them on cardstock and add them to my paper pages. I can see myself adding more digital tools and techniques to my pages over time. I can’t wait to see what’s next!
Use digital to create paper embellishments
It’s a great idea to transform digital designs into paper embellishments, basically creating and printing whatever you want. For those who use graphic programs, the sky is the limit in terms of designing little tidbits for your memory keeping. From journaling cards to background paper patterns to graphics for decoration. However, there are a multitude of digital kits available out there and they should not be limited to only digital scrapbookers. You can always print out those designs to be used in your paper scrapbooking.
In fact, I do that quite often! I print out background papers, journaling cards, word art and graphics onto cardstock and use them as if I bought them at the store. The beauty of digital is that I can print as many as I want in different sizes and even alter the color if I wanted to. Pretty darn cool, huh? While we are on this topic, there was recently also a post on Shimelle’s website listing 5 ways a paper scrapbooker could use a digital kit.
Try it yourself
I like having my scrapbooks on real-paper and adding layers, textures and embellishments. So printables are a great digital supply, because you can use again and again. Here’s a cute little birdie graphic that you can print out and use in your own memory keeping.
Download BackToPaper_Bluebird
Maybe for a page about your Twitter tweets, a little birdie said or a Spring season memory? Enjoy and feel free to share your pages in the comments below. Would love to see what you create or what you think about using digital for paper scrapping.
If you like printables, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter for new designs, links to freebies and the latest from yours truly.
by Linda | Feb 20, 2013 | DIY printables
The Pixel and Paper Series highlights digital techniques and products for scrapbookers like you and me. I believe that everyone should consider digital elements to be a part of their scrapbooking toolbox, so let’s learn together what the possibilities are. Each week, I’ll be sharing the opinion of a real-life scrapbooker to reveal how they use digital in their scrapbooking. Each post will also offer a freebie download to help you get started on your pixel and paper journey. Enjoy!
Introducing… Stacy Julian
If you’ve been into scrapbooking for a while, I’m sure you have heard of Stacy Julian. She was the editor of Simple Scrapbooks magazine, creator of the Library of Memories system and founded Big Picture Classes – a thriving and amazing community of scrapbookers learning and sharing together online.
I’ve taken many classes at BPC and love all my experiences. It’s great to be able to connect with a nice community of creatives, no matter where in the world you live. There’s also such a variety of classes to choose from, so I’m never without inspiration to scrapbook. From workshops to self-paced classes, there’s a huge fountain of ideas to draw from.
I think that the impact Stacy has made on the community of scrapbooking is that of storytelling. It’s about getting our stories recorded, not about product or the latest technique necessarily. No doubt, she has affected so many of us and continues to inspire with new ideas and projects. I’m always grateful by how much she shares through her blog and on various Paperclipping Roundtable podcasts…
Stacy says:
Like you, I feel that paper and digital are simply tools or means to an end. The end is storytelling. We have an opportunity to pay attention to our lives, to feel gratitude for the many and varied opportunities we have during our relatively short sojourn on earth.
I have found that taking pictures and then learning to live with those pictures is one the very BEST things I can do to stay positive and remind myself of the goodness that surrounds me.
We live in a wonderful digital age that allows us to enjoy, share and use our photos in unprecedented ways. I champion anyone who loves pictures and wants to cherish them and add lasting value to them, by attaching personal perspective in the form of words!
Whether this is done solely on a computer or in a more traditional way with paper and paste is not important to me. I think what is exciting is that women have found a comfortable place to practice this wonderful hobby of scrapbooking.
Some women are comfortable with pixels and some women are comfortable with paper — isn’t that awesome?! With comfort, comes confidence and hopefully, confidence gives way to curiosity. Curiosity feeds creativity and the most creative people actually seek out novel experiences. They like to try new things, because something new always feels exciting!
So the trick (I think) is to find your comfort zone, grow confident there and then follow your curiosities into new spaces that will keep your passion alive and your commitment strong.
My computer is definitely my friend and I use it a LOT to type out longer stories that I add to traditional pages. I am also faithful with my time-tested digital workflow — without my photo software I couldn’t organize or prioritize my digital images in the way that I do.
It’s About Storytelling
No doubt the point Stacy is trying to make is that digital tools are amazing and fabulous, but just another element to help us get to our end goal. It’s all about telling your story and recording your precious memories. That is the real importance of it all, not so much the labels or tools or specific aesthetic choices we make.
via Stacy’s blog
I really love how open Stacy is to considering so many different forms of memory keeping as scrapbooking. These days, many of us blog and instagram… and isn’t that a form of scrapbooking in itself?
It goes to show how broad this term “scrapbooking” can go. It’s no longer that stereotypical image of a grandma putting clippings in a giant book!
Try It For Yourself
In the spirit of storytelling and anything goes, I decided to great some square graphical cards that would match up well with square photos, the latest for Instagram-ers especially. With all the new ways of memory keeping, let’s think about using technology to help us on our journey. Ultimately the medium isn’t the point, rather the story you want to tell and the memories you want to keep.
“We scrapbook to live life twice.”
– Stacy Julian
Download BTP Instagram Graphic Cards
If you like printables, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter for new designs, links to freebies and the latest from yours truly.
by Linda | Feb 13, 2013 | DIY printables
The Pixel and Paper Series highlights digital techniques and products for scrapbookers like you and me. I believe that everyone should consider digital elements to be a part of their scrapbooking toolbox, so let’s learn together what the possibilities are. Each week, I’ll be sharing the opinion of a real-life scrapbooker to reveal how they use digital in their scrapbooking. Each post will also offer a freebie download to help you get started on your pixel and paper journey. Enjoy!
Introducing… Katie the Scrapbook Lady
A super prolific digital scrapbooker, you probably know Katie from The Daily Digi and The Digi Show. She’s an amazingly efficient scrapbooker and she’s always sharing tips, tricks and goodies. Most definitely an inspiring lady who’s been around the industry for a long time. She’s also offering her template designs to help you scrap your memories with ease! I had to ask about her thoughts in regards to using digital tools in scrapbooking.
Katie says:
I think digital design/scrapbooking tools are so useful for everyone! I know some people are intimidated by their computers, and others just really love the tactile feeling of “real” paper, so I realize that digital isn’t for everyone. However, the journaling, title, and photo editing tools are of great use to anyone. My favorite piece of advice for someone who just wants to dabble with some digital effects would be to try adding word art to a photo. I wrote an article for The Daily Digi called “Write on Your Photos” that has been very popular with paper scrappers.
I really believe that the divide is becoming less of a difference. Nowadays, computers are such a part of our everyday world that it’s natural to turn to digital skills to enhance any type of project – even paper scrapping.
Embrace Your Computer
I agree with Katie that these days, using your computer in scrapbooking has become pretty commonplace. Perhaps scrapbookers don’t even realize that they are using digital tools. From camera phone photography, blogging, social media “journaling” to digital photo processing and typing journaling out – they all count as your digital tools.
I think the key is to realize that your computer is a resource and that you shouldn’t hesitate to use it to the max.
Processing your photos is a huge element these days and we are all pretty much dealing with digital photos, so it’s inevitable… you’ve got to embrace your computer, right? Even simply adding some word art as Katie mentioned, which can be super simple, can help to enhance your scrapbooking.
via Katie’s blog
I know that Katie also loves to use digital graphics in her scrapbooking… think of it like a premade sticker, notecard or element… like paper embellishments. Why not consider printing out digital designs to use in your paper scrapbooking?
via Katie’s blog
Try It For Yourself
I’m a big fan of graphic journaling cards as embellishments in layouts – easy to pop into templates as well. For the Valentine holiday, I decided to create a few love themed cards… I hope you will enjoy using them in your projects, download the sampler below and try some digital in your scrapbooking today. Have fun!
Download Love Journaling Cards
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