I Heart Digital Scrap Booking

I started scrapbooking when I was 12 years old.  Back in the day, I scraped 8.5 x 11 pages and and used bright neon paper.  I get a good laugh at myself when I looked through my first scrapbook.  I continued scraping until I graduated from high school, but fell a few months short of finishing my senior year scrapbook :(  The main reasons I stopped scraping was time, money and creative burn out.  As I got married and started having kids, I really wanted to get back into the habit of scrapbooking, but time and money were still an issue.

In 2008 a friend introduced me to Photoshop Elements (PSE).  I saw the layouts that she was creating and I knew I wanted to start using the program.  My hubby gave me the program for Mother's Day that year and I was so excited to get started.  I loaded the program, downloaded my first digital kit and was ready to create.  I sat down at my computer but had no idea where to start.  After many failed attempts, I gave up. 

After a few months, I was ready to try again.  I watched what seemed like hundreds of PSE YouTube tutorials and slowly I started to get the hang of it.  Then I recruited my friend to show me the ropes and watched her create a layout.  Finally, I knew just enough to start creating. 

Here is the very first layout I created.  I started out small with each page until I learned and more. 

Now, my pages look more like this.  Here is my most recent layout for my little guy to help celebrate his first year of life.

To make sure that I utilize my time and creative juices more effectively, I limit my scrapbooking.  I scrap one 2-page layout that highlights our year as a family and one 2-page layout for each of my 3 kids for their birthday.  By the time my kids grow up and leave for college, they will have have fun family and self history to take with them along their journeys.   Well, that's my goal anyways!!!

I want to be able to "pay it forward" what I have learned.  I can remember feeling lost and overwhelmed when I wanted to get started.  So you will start seeing more posts of my scrapbook layouts that include tips that I have learned over the years to help you all get started.