Disney Digital Albums for Dummies?

[Belle0101]

In advance, please forgive the newbie questions. I never imagined that I'd venture to the other side of scrapbooking.

In 2002 we took our first and only trip to Disney with all four of our children. I promised each of the kids I'd make them an album. I started one and realized I would have to do it times 4. It got overwhelming and I never even finished the first one.

I was at an event tonight and what about digital?

If I understand it right ... I buy / download papers and design it on my computer?

Where do I print the album from? Is it from online photo service stores like Snapfish?

I saw that you can do it via Creative Memories through Storybook but they don't have quite the assortment of papers I would like.

And, once you buy / download papers you can use them as many times as you want?

Thanks!!

 

[mommyarewegoingback]

I love digital! I use to be about the paper, scissors, stamps, punches, embellishments... But you know what you can do that all on the computer! I find that I actually do more scrapbook because I don't have to take out all my supplies and put them all away, which means I have to have a block of time. I can spend ten minutes or 2 hours scrapbooking now and not have to set off time to set up and clean....

I think there's a post somewhere about digital scrapbook basics around here. But yes, you pick the software program you want to use. I use Photoshop Elements. Then you can be as creative or as "not" creative as you want. You can buy all your elements online (digital paper, stickers, embellishments, stitching...) or you can buy premade pages where you just plop photos in. There's a thread about disney related digital scrapbooking kits. A great resource if you want "disney" themed pages.

Welcome to the dark side

-Virginia

 

[Belle0101]

Thanks for the welcome to the "Dark Side".

That's what it feels like ... I'm betraying all I've ever been taught.

I'll look around for that post on digital basics. I'm looking forward to giving it a try!

 

[mommyarewegoingback]

I realized I didn't fully answer your question....

You can start download photoshop elements for a trial. And you can download some free kits to try it out. And depending on my mood, I get them printed at shutterfly, blurb or artscow.

Also...

I actually did start by reading this freebie tutorial at
scrapgirls.

Here's the link from our forum about digital kits and which are related to disney:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2290663

My favorite "disney" digital designer is brittishdesigns. I'm not going to post a link because the board has been funny about links to stores and stuff. Good luck.
-Virginia

 

[MarieS]

I just started a digital album this month. I went on a disney trip with my nieces and like you thought this would be the fastest way to make multiple albums.

I bought Creative Memories Story Book Creator because I saw a demo and read a bunch of people saying it was user friendly. There is a trial version too, but you are limited in what you can do with it. So far I have been pleased with it. I watched a couple of tutorials and started in. CM has some digital kits and predesigned pages. Both downloads and cd's. I bought the Mickey content cd because I wanted to start with predesigned pages to get my feet wet. You can change things around on those pages, but it gives you a good start. One thing I'm liking about digital is being able to resize or recolor elements. And I don't worry about using multiple papers on a layout because I can just re-use them and it won't be too much bulk.

Now I'm branching out to other kits. I found a couple of blogs of ladies that made stuff for the creative disign board here that had some cute disney kits.
With Story Book Creator you can import kits from other designers, but you can't use CM kits with other software programs.

My friend also just started with SBC and had her first album printed out by CM. It turned out good. I know there are other sites you can use to make bound books and print pages.

I still love traditional paper scrapbooking, but I think digital will be great for me when I need multiple albums or want to print out individual pages.

 

[rie'smom]

I agree with Marie. Creative Memories is wonderful! It is super user friendly and this company has the cutest Disney papers and embellishments plus you can upload your personal stuff to use in projects. It isn't Disney but I just finished a 1 year photo album for a my 3 month old niece. My SIL had mentioned she saw one at a shower and loved it, so I'm going to surprise her with one. The pages are pretty plain because my SIL is a "less is more" type of person.

Here is an example of a few pages:

 

[MarieS]

Great pages! I love the little princess!

 

[rie'smom]

Thank-you! The princess is in one of my personal folders and I was able to upload her to my CM page.

 

[chrissi1]

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I am a digital scrapper. I use ADCSee Photo Editor to scrap with and Photo Manager to tag/organize digital kits and my photos.
If you want to get a lot of pages done quickly and with no mess of paper and glue, digital is the perfect way to go.

Using non-scrap specific software like ACDSee or Adobe Photoshop/Elements is a good was to go, becuase you can use it for so many things other than just making scrap pages. I have had books printed at artscow and at shutterfly. I have also resized pages to 8x8 and printed them on my photo printer and put them into albums.

I am getting ready for our trip in 4 weeks and 1 day!