Archive for December, 2007
Family Scrapbooking For The Holidays
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
Author: Wes Waddell
Family is everything during the Christmas, Kwanza and Hanukkah holiday season.
It’s the one time of year that even your teenagers will make an effort to participate in family activities. They may even instigate one or two new ones of their own 
One of the activities we started while our kids were still teens was to use the joy of the season to create holiday scrapbooks for other family and friends. We found that it was actually quite easy to get the kids involved as even they loved going through the family vacation and holiday party photos from the last year and into years past.
The only real hard part was getting them to focus on only a few pages worth of pictures and not trying to create a 200 page complete family heritage project. That kind of time, we usually just didn’t have.
Keep the smiles coming… Some of the details our teenagers remembered from the past year alone were quite the eye openers. To be young and see the world like that again… I know it kept us smiling.
We would take one of the early long weekends, like Veterans Day in early November, and use the long weekend with no school to plan, start and even complete our family holiday scrapbook. We would start on Friday evening after school was out and use that time to brainstorm ideas to create the theme for that year. Once we got started, we would have little ideas pop up all night, during dinner, while watching TV and just before bed. We wrote each of them down on a long list, not stopping until lights out.
On Saturday morning, we would go over all the ideas over breakfast and choose one for the project. Each year, on member of the family was chosen (we went in order of birth and rotated each year) as project lead and they held the final decision power if we couldn’t narrow it down to just one idea.
It was amazing how being responsible for the final outcome of the project that was being given to other family and friends made everyone cooperate and get along.
The rest of Saturday was spent gathering up the photographs (digital and print) and writing down all the stories that went with them… again, this was sometimes very interesting from the kids point of view.
Sunday and Monday were spent in all kinds of different conversations while we worked to put it all together and match the themes into one finished book. The only boring part at times was all the duplicate pages for each gift. We don’t have that problem these days… but more on that in a few minutes.
It was sometimes amazing what you could do with an assembly line of family members once everything was planned and laid out. It’s funny, we never could get that organized any other time of the year.
One item of note: we took lots of photos as we did this and would make 2 to 4 pages of our own each year to add to our own growing book of memories.
Today, the kids are all grown and out on their own. But, we still use the phone and other technologies to keep the tradition going. Computers have made the duplication process a thing of the past as we do all our scrapbooking on the computer now. Everything is digital! Even the final gifts are CD and DVD presentations to most of the extended family. We have the books printed into real hardbound books for our special heirloom gifts that the grandparents (and now great grandparents) get.
The grandkids are even getting old enough to start joining in and the childhood perspective is again with us when we tell the stories.
This year’s project will be our very first Storybook Scrapbook. All our best holiday memories of the past 20 years are being added to the story of Twas the Night Before Christmas. We can’t wait to read the finished book to our youngest grandchildren Christmas Eve.
I hope that this gives you some ideas on how you can spend more quality time together as a family and make new memories in the process of remembering past ones.
Families really are everything… especially during the holiday season. I hope you’ll all find more time to spend with yours this year.
Happy Holidays!
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Wes and Kathy own and operate multiple digital scrapbook membership sites, including: TwasTheNightScrapbook.com Membership offers much more than just scrapbook templates, it’s help when you need it and a friendly push to keep you on track. You’ll also want to visit http://www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com for FREE yearly Photo Calendar Templates and FREE Photo Greeting Card digital downloads. |
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FREE Digital Scrapbooking Introduction
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Author:Â Wes Waddell
When it comes to old-fashioned hand scrapbooking you will find that it takes a whole lot of time, more space than you think, and plenty of hard earned cash. For those who are interested in the old ways only, they will need to find the months of time to complete a single album. They will also need to find the long term space that will be needed for all their expensive supplies and tools. With all the papers, stickers, cutting and cropping tools, and lots of other supplies, you will need too have a whole area set aside for scrap booking or maybe even a whole room dedicated to the craft.
There are a lot of expensive supplies (it’s amazing how quickly they add up) that you will need to acquire, and thus, you will find that you need room to put your old traditional hand scrapped pages together and also be able to store the supplies. By the time that you get everything together that you need just for one very basic scrap book session, you will notice that you have wasted ten to twenty minutes every time before you even start.
So, what’s a busy person like you supposed to do?
You know you want to preserve all your most treasured memories and family history, but you can’t afford to spend lots of your precious time looking for stamps or that perfect tool to make the picture stand out on the scrapbook page. You need to find that easy and quick way to solve all your problems with scrap booking.
That perfect solution to the hassles of the old fashioned hand scrapped pages is digital or computer scrap booking.
Hang in there with me because there is no need to be intimidated by not having large quantities of computer skills. Digital scrapbooking is easy to learn, can be done with FREE Software, is a fraction of the cost in both time and materials of the old ways and can make designing pages and creating albums go more smoothly. With digital, you are left with much more time for the other things in your life and there’s no mess to clean up when you are done… just hit the save button!
When you follow a few easy FREE Computer Scrapbook Training steps you will be able to begin your digital voyage in nothing more then the time it would take you to pull the paper and books out for the old way. The difference here is that once you learn the basics, you can start and stop at the drop of a hat and with the help of digital scrapbook quick build templates, you can complete an entire album in a weekend rather than months for the old hand scrapped processes.
Step One: Get organized.
First, you need to find a way to put your pictures online so you can sort them into directories and timelines. You can easily get your pictures online if you are already using a digital camera, but you will want to scan some of your older hard copy pictures onto your computer too.
Even if you do not know how to transfer pictures from your digital camera to your computer, you can still put your pictures onto a CD at any photography (photo processing) center. At one of these centers, you can usually also scan your printed pictures with a little of the attendants help and put them onto a CD to take home as well.
For those who are looking to go beyond the basic digital scrap booking steps, you may want to go online to several sites and register for a digital scrapbook membership. You can also use advanced photo-editing programs to change the look of your digital photo images, but this is not necessary for beginners. In any case, once your pictures are on your computer, you can use them to create all your new digital scrapbook pages.
Step 2: The digital scrapbook software.
There are many programs available to help you to design, edit, and print pages. You can buy a program at the store, you can purchase a downloadable program on the Internet or you can even get FREE Computer Scrapbook Training and FREE Software to use for your scrapbooking.
You will want to do this even if all you would like to do is to share your album online. Compare prices and services on the programs before making a purchase—not all programs are made the same way, and you’ll want to find one that’s appropriate for your skill level. We recommend Scrapbook Max for it’s ease of use and it’s complete set of digital scrapbook options. There’s a great review if you are interested at: http://www.myprincesscrafts.com/scrapbook-news.htm#News-3. If you are looking for FREE Computer Scrapbook Software, then you’ll want to check out the complete Computer Scrapbooking 101 Training Mini-Course with FREE Scrapbook Software link at: www.ComputerScrapbookTraining.com. Â
Once you have chosen and/or purchased a scrap booking digital image software, you will want to look through the tutorial steps. Learn to use as many of the functions as you can. Learning how to use the program from the start is going to save you a lot of time later when you’re creating you first digital scrapbook pages on your computer.
You have to understand that every program works in a some what different way. You will want to create the pages and either print them out or you may just want to create the pages and post them on a website or place them on CD/DVD for your family from a far to see.
It is easy to create and it is also very convenient to have video slide show presentations. You will be able to show it to those who don’t come around often or those who don’t travel that far to just see pictures of the family and trips or memories. You will also feel really good knowing that you have an online safety net of your valuable memory pages. If anything ever happens to the hard copies, you still have them preserved online or on CD/DVD for you to print again. Not to mention that you can make as many copies as you need for family and friends with just a press of the print button. Try that one on a hand scrapped page!
Also, you will find hat digital scrap booking is a fraction of the cost of start up that old fashioned hand scrappers go through and it will take up a lot less of your valuable time. You will find scrap booking fun and enjoyable. Digital Scrapbooking is what scrapbooking has always aspired to become. Inexpensive, Fast and most of all fun to share with the whole family. Since it involves the computer, just try and keep your spouse and kids from joining in…
Wes Waddell and his wife, Kathy are the owners of PrincessCrafts. The first and largest digital scrapbook membership site on the internet today. If you are looking to get started with scrapbooking (old or new), then you’ll want to check out their new definitive guide on everything scrapbooking: The EZ Scrapbooking Guide can be found at: www.EZScrapbookGuide.com.
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FREE Digital Scrapbook Downloads…
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Seasons Greetings Scrapbook Friend,
It’s heading toward the middle of December already, can you believe it?
As always, Kathy has a few notes to pass on about new FREE Stationeries and photo greeting cards and things coming off the members areas by the 15th.
First, just wanted to mention that we still have a few of the 3 years for the price of one PrincessCrafts Annual Memberships left. They are headed out the door fast for the holiday gift season, so hurry on this one or you’ll miss out. Full Details are on our BLOG at:
http://blog.princesscrafts.com/2007/11/26/digital-scrapbook-christmashanukkahkwanza-sale/ . Â If you can’t get there for any reason and you want the scoop, just drop us a line and I’ll be happy to fill you in.
Now, for the news…
Kathy will be removing World Book Day 1 thru 3 on both the 8.5×11 and the 12×12 areas by Dec. 15th. Platinum and Gold members, get them while you still can. She’s making room for more new sets coming on the 15th.
You can’t misss this one!
Kathy has just added 22 new Christmas stationeries to www.1-computer-stationery.com and you are going to love every one of them. Just in time for the family holiday newsletter/Christmas cards.
And, for the Photo Greetin Card makers:
Kathy also just added Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza photo greeting cards to the always_fre` card site at: www.freescrapbooktraining.com/free_cards/free_cards.htm. Â You don’t have to sign-up or do anything except go there, download your card templates and enjoy.
One last note before you head off to get all your goodies. Kathy also loaded both the 8.5×11 and 12×12 members areas with 3 autumn sets, 6 halloween sets and 3 thanksgiving sets to each area.
That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to get you Platinum PrincessCrafts Annual (97) 3 years for the price of one. Limited to the first 100 new subscriptions and there aren’t that many left after a lot of our Platinum Members took advantage to extend their current memberships out.
Yes, it extends any membership you already have out 3 extra years. Just let us know if you have any questions. Full Details are HERE!
Happy Scrappin’ Holidays!
Kathy and Wes
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