couponqueenofcorning

Yep, it’s an obsession for sure. I have been a scrapper since my son was about a year old or so. So, I’ve been doing scrapbooking for about nine or ten years. It can get quite expensive with all the neat things you can buy. If you do scrapbooking or know someone who does, you know what I mean. If you don’t, then the next time your at Michael’s or JoAnne Fabrics, take a look at the rows of scrapbooking accessories. For me I love the papers and the stickers. Up until my daughter was born, I did quite a few layouts a month and really kept up with all the pictures I took. Not anymore. For the last two and a half years I have done about five layouts and I think that was when my daughter was about a year old. I have used my scrapbooking papers and accessories to make thank you cards a couple of times and recently made hubby’s grandma a framed scrapbook page of the children.

Now, I actually have a little more time to do stuff like that because the little ones are getting to an age where they can play quietly and sleep all night. But, I do not have the room to do it. This apartment is way too small for the five of us and keeping a table out with my scrapbooking stuff on it would be dangerous. LOL. When we move into our new house (we are hoping that it will be in by spring; dependent on weather) our basement will be insulated and I am so going to have my own little section down there for crafting.

Well, moving onto the point. I would bet that right now I have a few hundred dollars in scrapbook papers and other accessories. I would also bet that I have spent well over $500 since I started scrapbooking. Well, I have now started digiscrapping.  I don’t have Photoshop (don’t want to spent that kind of money - me being frugal and all), but I do have a few photo editing software programs that I downloaded for free. Photofiltre was the first one I downloaded a few years ago. It is really easy to use and great for altering photos. The cons are that a lot of the extra stuff on the site is in French (which isn’t a problem for me but may be for others) and that it does not do layers. A couple months ago I downloaded Paint.Net. I really really like this program. You can do layers and all sorts of neat things; and it was pretty easy to learn. It was still lacking a few things that Photoshop had that I wanted. Like animation, brushes, etc. So, now I also have GIMP, which similar to Photoshop. The main disadvantage to GIMP right now is that I do not know how to use it very well, but I am learning.

The great thing about digital scrapping is there are tons of blogs and sites out there that offer freebies. I am subscribed to two great sites that help you find the freebies: digifree and Scrappy Freebies .  I just love all the cool stuff you can get. Here’s a quick one I pieced together just to show you what you can get for free and how cool it is:

The frame I got for free (unfortunately, none of the things included in the download says the site name or site owner. If anyone knows who it’s from, please let us know through my comments.

I’ve also been working on making myself some new backgrounds and banners for my blogs. I have several done now, and I will be changing it soon. I am thinking that I will do some sort of Valentine’s Day themed background in February. We shall see. If you would like to start doing digital scrapping, there are so many great blogs out there to look at and get inspired by. Just search for digital scrapping, or log in to Entrecard and under Hobbies there will be tons of great sites. Also, the two links I referenced above, will have tons of links.

As always, feel free to post a comment and let me know if you already enjoy doing this or if it’s something you might look into.