What Do You Do with Digital Scrapbook Pages?

I had a great question the other day from somebody who is new to digital scrapbooking. She wanted to know what I do with my designs once they are done.

I generally do one of three things with my digital pages. The first is I wait til the end of the year and I collect pages that have to do with everything we have done this year as a family, vacations, school, weekend whatever I have scraped that relates to the current year and I have a book made of them. Many times I go back and add extra journaling because I want to write to my daughter about the year and what I felt about this year of her life. I love to see the books lined up on her book shelf and it's fun to so back and see what we did that year. The books are so light compared to my huge, heavy traditional scrapbooks and I find them much more likely to be enjoyed and I use them as a reference to help me remember what year things happened.

When you want to have a book made there are many options, I think it generally has to do with personal preference and what styles are available. A couple of the most popular that I've tried are Shutterfly and Snapfish. I preferred the quality of Shutterfly. This is a great time of year to order books many sites offer substantial savings. For anyone looking to see the options compared, I've found a review of many here  the books are geared towards photographers and others but, this will give you a very through comparison.

The second option for me is a create a hybrid page. There are many examples here on my blog and I've gone back and created a hybrid label so you can see examples. A few of my all time favorite pages are included in this category. When I create a hybrid page I print out the background I've created using Photoshop and I print it out in either a 12 x 12 size or 8 1/2 x 11 size, I work in both formats. Next I print the papers and elements I use on Epson paper and I print my photos on Epson photo paper. You can see all the products on the Favorite Things tab on my blog the link is here. I'm going to add the photo books to this list in the next couple of days.

The last things I do with my pages has more to do with the fact that I'm married to a very "techie" guy. I have a product called Apple TV that plays photos and music with cool effects. But is basically a slideshow and I love to share my pages this way my family gets together over the holidays and I show my year in review slide show and everyone gets to see anything they missed holidays, special events, new photos and scrapbook pages. There are companies that are user friendly like iPhoto for mac users or Windows Movie Makers which allow you to play them on your TV,  iPhone, iPad or similar. They can be uploaded to YouTube or similar and I really enjoy seeing my pages like this and I highly recommending giving this a try! You can see one I made here.

If you'd like to subscribe to my Youtube channel click more info and there is a link to subscribe I'm planning a few videos so stay informed! 

Today is also Monday and I have some new layouts from Lori Whitlock to share.

Her files are available from her website or Jessica Sprague through Echo Park Paper.

These two page layouts are perfect for the center page of your photo books.

I created these with the new templetes that Lori is making in both .psd format and .svg format which is great news for Silhouette users.

Thanks for visiting and if you have any suggestions on what you like to do with your digital scrapbook pages please leave them in the comments!