Tradtional or digital scrapbooking more time and $$$?

[cjackearl]

Ok, for all you scrappers, either digital or traditional or both, which is less expensive? I've done tradtional scrapbooking in the past, enjoy it on a once weekly basis with my girls, but find it takes so much time and money. I was hoping that "going digital", at least partly, might save me some time and money. Am I right, or can digital be just as time consuming and costly? Those with experience, give me your thoughts,please.

 

[ngneer98]

I personally think digital is cheaper, but it could probably be debated either way. if you buy a completely coordinated set of papers, embellies/stickers/etc for a paper page, that's roughly the same cost as a digital kit. but the digital kit never gets 'used up'....it's there forever. so that part is a savings.

With digital, you have the startup cost of software (if you don't already have it), and depending on what program you get, you could spend as little as $30 or as much as $1500. I spent $70 on my copy of photoshop elements a couple years ago. you can get a LOT of digital supplies for free...there are tons of gals who give away stuff on their blogs every day....and that can at least get you started. you'll eventually end up buying kits just to have more options with things that coordinate together. BUT....if you are lucky enough to get picked to be on someones Creative Team, you get the kits for free in exchange for promoting their stuff and doing layouts for them to advertize their stuff with.

The other cost is printing out the layouts once they're done.....i pay $2.49 for a 12x12 layout. some people don't print them at all....some people have them bound into a book for $20-$30 for 20 or so pages. i like having the traditional 12x12 albums and i slip my pages into them. the only other big expense i've incurred is buying an external harddrive to store all this stuff on.....some of these kits are massive files......100Mb-ish.....so you'll fill up your hard-drive before ya know it if you get a lot of stuff!

so is digital cheaper? maybe a little......for me, i prefer it because it's EASIER on my lifestyle. i don't have to drag out papers, markers, find embellies to match......all my digital stuff is in folders and i know that in each folder everything coordinates, and i can see in the previews what's in the folders....so i find my stuff much faster with digital. and my kids can't get into the digital stuff like they'd get into the paper stuff.....big plus there! and i can even take my laptop with me into the van and scrap on our way to relatives' houses......or on the 16+ hour drive to WDW! can't do THAT with paper! and i finish digital layouts WAY faster than i ever did with paper....but maybe i was just slow.......it'd take me FOREVER just to find the papers i'd want to use, kwim? I'd spend probably 2 hours on a paper layout......whereas now i can get a layout done digitally in less than an hour easily....

clear as mud?

 

[disneyfan2]

once you get through the learning curve, Digital will be faster. Cheaper if you don't spend too much $$$ on kites( ) sometimes hard to resist. But you can start by finding many free kits on line. and because they can be reused, long term a great savings. I love the fact that i can take my laptop anywhere and open a page to work on., No supplies to bring out , etc
But the learning curve is a bite time consuming when you are new to programs like Photoshop.

 

[nicurn]

have to say, I'm a big fan of digital. I just started so it's probably not "faster" yet but it's easy. I can walk away from a layout and the cat can't wreck it by sitting on it for example. there are a TON of digital freebies so really unless you absolutely love a kit, you don't have to spend money on kits. I still like to make cards and the cute books with my "real" stuff but... maggie

 

[GrumpyMom1]

I thought digital would be less expensive but I don't know that it is because I can't resist all of the beautiful kits.

But it's much easier for me to do digital because you don't have to pull out a ton of supplies to do a page, you can walk away and come back later, and there's no mess to clean up. I can spend a few minutes here and there instead of spending a half a day.

Since I still have a bunch of paper supplies and old pictures that need to be scrapbooked, I will be doing traditional for all of those and digital for all my new pictures.

 

[Fran98765]

I've been doing digital for a couple years now and I love it. I'm much better at digital then at paper, I was very n00bish on my paper layouts. I get a LOT more done digitally. Before I would dread the bringing out of supplies to get pages done. And now, hanging out on this forum, I feel like I am saving a ton of money, I don't need Cricuts and other machines like that.

I don't buy kits very often. I am on several creative teams, so I barely keep up with those kits. One of my designers, DeDe Smith, just bams out kits and it's hard to keep up with HER! Plus I'm on another store's CT, so we have lots of designers kits to work with there and then I'm on another 2 CTs, so I can really get by without paying any money. But you have to practice and learn a few tricks before getting on CTs!

I have ventured to the designer side of scrapping, and my last few purchases were all commercial use items. But I don't think I'll buy much more of that either as I learn to make more elements myself. I have funded my tiny purchases by selling junk around my house on ebay.

I am also a cheapy when it comes to printing. I get photobooks and I LOVE them! I have gotten 3 from Shutterfly and I have just tried a new company, ArtsCow.com. I haven't gotten it back in the mail yet, so I am anxious to see how it turned out. I am very happy with the quality of the Shutterfly books. I really hope the quality is good on the Arts Cow book, they are much cheaper then Shutterfly... I got a 30 page 8x8 book, a keychain with a pic on it and a deck of cards with a pic on it for 13.99 including shipping! That was obviously a big special. But if you sign up for these sites they will email you special offers, I always use them for Shutterfly too. My 3rd book there was free, just paid shipping. My first with them was a bit high, it was about $65, but it was 64 pages. And I had a big discount too, it was originally like $80.

 

[kswm30b]

I do both, though my heart is still with paper scrapping. Digital is definitely cheaper, especially with the freebies designers give out. You can't walk into AC Moore and say "give me all these products for free!" You could probably get away for a while without buying anything. I didn't buy anything until I knew for sure that I wanted to do digi, so I waited about 3 months. Now, I've bought quite a few kits, but I've still spent way less than I usually do just going to the scrapbook store just once!!

On the other hand, I don't think it's any faster on average. Sometimes I can get a LO done quickly (like for the speed scrap challenges), but most of the time, I spend longer on digi LOs than I do on paper LOs (and I am such a slow scrapper, I spend hours on LOs!) With digi, I sometimes labor over a LO over several days, which I would never do with a paper LO (when I start a paper LO, I want to finish it that day, since I don't have anywhere to keep unfinished LOs.)

I love both, I'm glad I recently discovered digi, but I LOVE my Cricut & 3D embellishments too much to even think about giving up paper scrapping.

 

[nicurn]

just thought of another plus for digi scrapping, at least for me. dd irish dances and let me tell ya there is not much out there for irish dance. I must own ALL the papers that come out only at st pats day... but with digital, I have found TONS of irish stuff that is totally awesome! not much out there for braces either.. used dd's xray that the dentist has online for background paper. The poor cat is sad that there is no mess, he's a big fan of scraps of paper. of course now, he's walking all over the keyboard instead. sigh. maggie

 

[RCDisneyFan]

i don't have to drag out papers, markers, find embellies to match......

That's my favorite thing about digital scrapping. I have a scanner, so if there napkins, wrappers, wristbands, etc - I can scan them and add them in that way. Digital has a higher start-up cost (e.g. sofware, scanner, etc) but I think over time it'll be cheaper. Every single paper, kit, embellishment I purchase or make is re-useable - I'll never run out of Disney stuff!

I think of it this way - generally, for paper scrapping I've bought the scrapbook at WDW ($30.) I print all the pictures in the sizes I *think* I need ($50.) I buy stickers, papers, hole punches, etc (assume $25/scrapbook for new stuff.) Don't forget the pkg of 20 plastic sleeves to put the pages in (can't remember how much those are!) My scrapbooks were already running me $100 plus each time. The last one was digital, I paid for maybe two digital kits ($15) and printing the book with shipping cost me $75.

So far, I'm saving over $15 per book - I never have to clean up a scrapping mess, I never have to worry about embellishments or photos falling out of the books again.

I don't think it goes faster for me - I experiment a lot with photo sizes, drop shadows, textures, stamps & brushes (I use PSE.) But I'm NEVER frustrated now with not having the right picture size, or cutting my pictures unevenly.

 

[rileysmommy]

Digital for me is certainly cheaper as I try to snag freebies where I can. When I started finding all the freebies I used to grab everything without really thinking about it. Now I'm a bit more selective and there are certain designers whose stuff I love so I make a point to visit their blogs and snag their freebies. Most of my Disney stuff was all freebies which is so great.

Other advantages of digital are not running out of adhesive in the middle of a project, in the middle of the night. I always hated when that happened. Also, no defective products, like chipboard letters that are supposed to be sticky but aren't. Also when you shop you immediately download the products and there they are for you to use instantly. No waiting for the UPS guy to show up and of course, showing up on the one day that dh is home.

Now that I have a laptop I too like the convience and ease of scrapping wherever and whenever I want. I'm a simple scrapper to begin with so I enjoy the ease of digital. I use a lot of templates and can easily fit more photos on a page.

Give it a try with some freebie kits and see how you like it.

 

[cjackearl]

Thanks for all of the replies! I think I'm going to give digital a go. PSE may be my birthday present to myself. I have a standing weekly scrapbooking/movie night with my daughters so I'll probably still do some traditional stuff also.