5 Sites to Get You Started Digital Scrapbooking

Digital scrapbooking is an amazing hobby. It is the type of thing that makes you want to do more and go farther and farther. The good thing about digital scrapbooking is that you never have to leave your home or computer. You do not have to run out to the store because you need more letters or ending up having to buy more paper because you ran out. Everything is reusable and versatile. A quick note: I am not a very good digi-scrapper. I am sad to say that. I am just starting out but I already have tons of advice.

Before you can start digital scrapbooking however you are going to need a couple of things:

-A photo editing program. The most common are Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Photoshop 7, and Adobe Photoshop Elements. You will also find people who use PaintShop Pro and other photo editing programs. Its all up to you and how much money you spend. For reference I use Adobe Photoshop CS2

-Pictures. Now this pictures need to be on your computer whether you took them digital or scan them. You might want to organize them accordingly.

-Space on your hard drive. Many digital scrapbookers have dedicated external drives just for their digital scrapbooking stuff. Trust me when you start you will realize you need a huge amount of space. Backing up is also very important. You will want to back things up on DVDs or CDs.

-Stuff. Digital scrapbooking stuff like papers and elements are what your page is going to be made up of so will need a lot of it. In this article I will go over getting stuff.

Now you should have everything about expect for stuff. If you do that's great. You are already ahead of us. I wanted to share a couple of sites to get you started because that is what this article is about. The following sites are what I used to get me started. Now believe me, you can start of digital scrapbooking for free for a month maybe but after you get into it you will want to spend money. Do not runaway from this hobby though, you are going to definitely get your dollar's worth because you can reuse everything over and over again.

The first thing you should do is sign up for the newsletter at ScrapGirls (scrapgirls.com). The newsletter is run daily except for Sunday. You will get great tips and feel connected through the digital scrapbooking world. You will find freebies included in each issue to use. Normally they follow a similar theme. You will also find tutorials on how to make specific layouts or how to do a certain technique. At the end of each newsletter they have a list of upcoming chats, crops, and classes. Everything is online, I wanted to make sure you guys remembered that.

Remember how I said you needed stuff? Well now I am going to share how start getting a hold of it. You will want to visit Shabby Princess (shabbyprincess.com). She offers amazing kits that include alphas, elements, and papers. They are huge and considering they are free you might want to download all of them because you never know when you will need it. She also has a shop where you will find more stunning kits for around 6 dollars. She also sells individual things but if you are like me you love having coordinated things and kits. Shabby Princess also has a veryinteresting blog, newsletter, and a small amount of tutorials.

Okay, now you have all this stuff on your computer. You probably want to know what to do with it and make your layouts look beautiful. You probably will want to head on over to Scrapbook-Bytes (scrapbook-bytes.com). They have tons of tutorials for practically every used photo editing program out there. The collection of tutorials is also constantly growing. Everything you might need to know for a while will be at your fingertips. They offer tutorials on technique, usage, and elements. Scrapbook-Bytes also has a nice community, its share of free downloads, forums, chats, contests and other events.

Now you are probably sucked into the world of digital scrapbooking. You probably want more. You want more cute things, more free things, more things to give your layouts that special touch. You also want to get to know more scrappers. If so, you will definitely want to visit ScrapArtist (scrapartist.com). You will see amazing galleries of other scrapper's layouts. They will probably make you inspired to do better. I know I definitely feel inspired. I also however, feel intimidated. I do not have the confidence to think that I can do such good layouts.

By reading this article you are probably already planning your layouts. After you get the hang of digital scrapbookings and you realize you want to continue you will probably realize how much money you are willing to spend on it. The last thing I want to share is Atomic Cupcake (atomiccupcake.com). They offer a great deal of unlimited access to their downloads for 13 dollars a month. They add kits and things everyday so you are definitely getting your money's worth. Its a great way to build up your collection.

I hope you guys enjoyed all the websites I shared with you today. I also hope you find them useful. If you are interested in digital scrapbooking please lookout for upcoming articles on other digital scrapbooking related articles.