Archive for March, 2010

Right now Ella Publishing is offering a Super Sampler ebook of some of their most popular books.  There’s no cost or additional purchase required for the Sampler ebook.  Just add it to your cart and checkout.

Ella Publishing offers ebooks on scrapbooking and photography topics written by some of the biggest names in the industry.  These are high-quality ebooks filled with gorgeous photos and beautiful layouts.

Every ebook is packed with scrapbooking tips and ideas.  I can’t recommend these books highly enough.  You’ll recognize many of the authors from the former Simple Scrapbooking magazine, as well as many from popular scrapbooking publications.  A few of the featured authors are Stacey Julian, Angie Lucas, and Renee Pearson.

A few of my favorite ebooks from Ella Publishing are:

• Quick and Creative Quizzes _ 125 journaling questions to ask and answer
• Stretch Your Sketches – Easy ways to recycle your best designs
• A Year in the Life – Scrapbook your year in 24 simple layouts

And not to be missed!

• UR2 Cr8ive – 68 playful ways to unleash your creativity

Oh, and you can easily print and bind your ebooks to have them as reference as you scrapbook.  I’m not sure how long this Super Sampler ebook will be available so don’t delay in downloading your copy.

It’s no secret that I love online scrapbooking classes.  I’ve reviewed a few of them on this site.  Over on the Daily Digi, Katie has listed and reviewed several of the best places to find online scrapbooking classes.  It’s a comprehensive list that includes her reviews of classes she’s taken, the basic information like the URL and instructors, an overview of the site, current or upcoming classes, and classes she has taken or would recommend.  Also check the comments section of this post for more reviews from readers.

Here’s a brief review of some of my favorite online scrapbooking classes.

Jessica Sprague – I’ve already reviewed her learn digital photo editing course and the beginning digital scrapbooking class, but I’ve taken many classes at Jessica’s site.  I have to say that her classes are the best to learn digital scrapbooking.  Her classes have become more expensive, but she also offers free ones as well.  These free classes are shorter than the others, but no less informative.  I recently took her Pen Tablet Basic for Scrapbookers course. I highly recommend that if you own a pen tablet.  If you’d like to broaden your journaling skills, Type + Writer 1&2 are excellent classes.

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Cathy Zielske recently posted a hybrid scrapbooking tuturial on her blog.  What is hybrid scrapbooking?  Basically, it’s using both digital and traditional elements on a scrapbooking page.  Some people start with a traditional layout and add digital elements.  Others begin with a digital page layout and after printing they add traditional elements to it.

Cathy’s approach to hybrid scrapbooking begins with her computer.  In the video she uses Photoshop Elements to show you how she approaches a hybrid scrapbooking layout. She uses a digital layout as the base for her page. She adds in traditional patterned paper to her layout, but one of the great tips in the video is using the digital layout to create a template to cut the paper to size.

Check out Hybrid Digital Scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking St. Patick’s Day can take so many forms.  You don’t even need to be Irish to let St. Patrick’s Day inspire your scrapbooking page layouts.  Here are a just a few ideas to consider for a fun page inspired by scrapbooking St. Patrick’s Day!

1. Scrapbook a page about your St. Patrick’s Day traditions.  Do you wear green?  Do you eat corned beef and cabbage?

2.  It’s all about green!  Scrapbook a layout with your favorite shades of green.

3.  How does your town celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?  Do you attend your local St. Patrick’s Day parade?  In Chicago they dye the Chicago River green!  Design a page that highlights how your area celebrates this holiday.

4.  Don’t forget St. Patrick’s Day parties.  Whether you go to a local Irish pub or celebrate at home with friends, be sure to take a few photos for your scrapbook album.

5. Snap photos of your lucky charm!  My son has a lucky hockey t-shirt, and my daughter has a little tiger eye stone that she thinks is lucky.  Create a page layout of your lucky charms.

6. Get lucky!  This one is my favorite and can be done by anyone at anytime in the year.  Why are you lucky?  Celebrate your good luck on a scrapbook page or create a mini album with “Lucky” as the theme.

I hope these inspired you to get a few pages done this week.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m always looking for opinions and advice on the best place to print digital scrapbooking pages.  For anything 8 1/2″ x 11″ or less, I print at home on my Epson Artisan 810.  I actually try to avoid printing digital layouts at 12×12 because it’s just so hard to find a good source for printing.  I hate spending the money to have pages printed and then getting back results that are less than satisfactory.  My most common compliant is colors that are too dark.  I thought for a while that maybe my monitor was to blame, but even compared to my in-camera monitor (on a Canon Xsi), my 4×6 prints come back too dark at many color printing companies.

At the Daily Digi, there is an excellent review of digital layout printing.  Steph sent the same layout to several difference printers and compared the intimidation factor (site navigation), ease of upload, photo colors, and paper and embellishment colors. I was really surprised to hear her results from Scrapbook Pictures, because I’ve heard so many digital scrapbookers rave about that service.  It seems she liked Persnickety the best overall.  That’s a company I haven’t heard of until now.  This is definitely a post you should check out if you plan on printing digital scrapbooking pages.  This review actually confirmed the decision I made to invest in a good printer.  I’d rather pay the cost of ink at home and have good results than waste time and money trying to find a good outside printing source.

The Daily Digi: Layout Printing Reviews

This is a great opportunity to win a Cricut die cut machine.  Pagemaps is hosting a contest that starts today through midnight (MST) March 28th.   The Cricut machine is sponsored by A Cherry On Top who is only authorized to sell Cricut in the US, making the contest only open to US citizens.  To enter, you need to create a layout based on the contest rules at Pagemaps. The theme of the page needs to be Appreciation.  For more details, check out Pagemaps’ blog.

If you’d like to know more about Cricut die cut machines, you can also check out these articles:

Cricut Design Studio

Using a Die Cut Machine

Scrapbooking Die Cut Machine Reviews