Tuesday, June 16, 2009

My "resume"

I thought it might be nice if I gave a little background into my experience as a scrapbooker and also what led to me switching from being a paper scrapper to a digital one! So here goes....

I first started (paper) scrapping in my senior year of high school. Since I was homeschooled I didn't have a year book, but wanted a way to document my last year of high school. I decided to make a scrapbook of it as an alternative. My mom got me materials and a class as my birthday present that year and my love-affair with scrapbooking began. I made an awesome senior year album and then set scrapping away for a while. Once I got married I knew that I just had to scrap all the awesome pictures I had. Luckily we were able to get an amazing photographer when she was just starting out and before she became "famous" (wwww.fotosbyjenni.com) and since I had a cd of the pictures it was super easy (and cheap) for me to get them all printed out and scrapped. I also created a Coast Guard album for my husband and all his experiences in the Honor Guard. I really did love scrapping, but I got frustrated because it was so expensive and I just didn't have the patience to do the pages up to the level I wanted them to be. Sitting for hours stitching and sanding and inking just wasn't my idea of a good time. Once I got pregnant I knew I would want to scrapbook all of my future childs babyhood. I picked up a few scrapbooking magazines to give me some fresh ideas. I kept gravitating to certain layouts in the magazine and was surprised when I realized that they were all done digitally. Even more surprising to me was that they all said they were made using Photoshop. I knew that you could edit photos in Photoshop, but had no idea you could digi-scrap with it, or how on earth that would even work. When I started a blog last summer I saw that my friend Jaimin had hers all decked out and adorable with a super cute background. I followed her link for the instructions on how to do it and was directed from there to several sites that had digital scrapbook papers that you could download and also use for blog backgrounds. Already intrigued at the idea of digital scrapping I looked all over these sites, specifically http://www.shabbyprincess.com/ , to learn more. I also found tutorials. When my in-laws told us that we could pick our b-day presents off of Dell.com and I saw PSE I knew exactly what I wanted. I got it, started downloading kits and checking out other sites and more tutorials.....and eventually that lead me to where I am now!!!!