Digital Scrapbooking 101 BLOG

Kathy and I just received this mail from one of our new members.  It’s a question we see from time to time, so we decided to share it with all of our digital scrapbook family…

Kathy and Wes,

Thank you for responding so quick to my question and for the upgrade!!!  Kathy was right, this is addictive!  I have one more question and then I think I am good to go.  I am having trouble figuring out the best type of paper to print my digital pages on.  The best Yet is glossy photo paper.  My pics look so much better but I don’t like the rest of the page shiny.  Please advise.  Thank you again for opening a whole new world to someone who has been hand scrapping for 7 years!!! 

god bless you guys!

Susan Hall

Here’s what we told her:

Hi Susan, 

It’s all a matter of opinion for a lot of the printing.  But, here’s what Kathy does… 

She also uses the glossy photo papers when she is doing bright colorful pages such as a children’s baby book.  When she wants a more antique or subdued look, she uses matt finish papers.  That’s also her preference for wedding books.  We also print a lot of our pages on clean bright white card stock.  It gives the same effect as matt photo papers when you put them inside the clear plastic sleeves and costs a fraction of the price that matt photo papers cost. 

This is also what we use when we make small 4×6 mini-pages and travel books.  Print 4 to a page and cut them apart to slip into the commercial travel or photo books.   

When we want something in-between, we use the new inkjet/laserjet color print papers that you can get in all the office supply stores.  It’s a little more expensive than regular copy paper, but has a special coating that makes the photo’s stand out almost as well as glossy photo paper, yet keeps the rest of the page more subdued.  It’s a great middle option and is fast becoming our second favorite print option. 

To be totally honest with you, we don’t print too many of our own finished scrapbooks these days.  We use Realbooks-Scrapbooks.com to have almost all of our scrapbooks made into real hardbound books.  It isn’t much more expensive, especially when you count the cost of a hand scrapped album cover.  In many cases, it comes out less expensive than had we done it ourselves.  It’s another one of those things that once you have one done, you don’t want to have it done any other way. 

Kathy’s in the process of creating lifetime books for each of our 5 grandkids now.  She has finished more than 100 pages per child and is still going strong.  We are going to have them made into hardbound book volumes by years so that we can keep adding to them as they grow.  You can have a little more than 200 pages per book, but we like to keep it at about 100.  That way you can get through reading and viewing a whole book in and hour or so.  If we make them any bigger than that, they don’t get looked at as often.  Besides, this way you can share the several volumes with multiple friends at the same time. 

The process sounds complicated when you try to explain it, but it really is easy once you’ve done one.  If you can save your images (finished digital pages) to a CD or DVD, then you can have a hardbound book made.  If you have high speed internet, you can even make arrangements to upload the pages and have them printed… complete with custom full color cover. 

This probably sounds a bit like a commercial, but we really just love them.  We’ve had 6 books made so far in the last year and a half and have 10 more in the works with the grandkids books.  Two each so far… 

Hope this helps…  

Kathy and Wes 

PrincessCrafts.com(877) 751-6368

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