Volume 9, April 2012

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In this Issue

Artful Activities Club Digital Crops and Events Desktop Calendar DSU Information Featured Designers – Meryl Bartho and Robyn Gough Featured Product – Scraps of Life: Birthday 2 CD Inspiration Station It's Shop Time! Letter from Team Digital – Gail Member Spotlight – Crystal, aka GrandmaCrys New to DSP Useful Links Newsletter Challenge Newsletter Freebie Site News and Features Store News

 
Letter from Team Digital – Gail

Spring has arrived...it's time to spring forward and spring into action!! Easter is upon us and the season is changing. What a great time to take advantage of all the beautiful kits in the store and scrap those outdoor photos, Easter egg hunts, family gatherings, beloved pets, and other events that this new-beginning-time-of-year brings us.

It couldn't be easier if you use the March Scraps of Style - Quick Clicks CD with its myriad of choices for fast layouts. If you don't have it yet, grab it now and see how convenient they are! These quick clicks also come pre-assembled in a .psd format for Photoshop, but did you know that you can also open and use these pre-assembled pages in the most recent versions of Paint Shop Pro? Talk about easy-peasy!

The April Club Digital is all about Spring - be sure to get yours because you don't want to miss out on the beautiful page kits and elements to use with those fabulous spring photos! SO much great inspiration!!

Enjoy your time outdoors and with your families this season! Your DSP family wishes you a very happy Easter and a wonderful new season!

Gail's Links:

Team Digital Bio
Personal Gallery

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Site News and Features

New to DSP?

Posting Your First Layout:

Are you thinking about posting your first layout? There's a special first layout challenge each month for you. Post your first layout to DSP this month and you may be a random winner for a free page kit!! You'll find all the information here.

What’s Going On

If you need to know what is going on, you need the What's Happening at DSP thread or the Calendar. You can also find out what contests and challenges are due in the What's Due thread.

What's DUE

If you are looking to find out what challenges are due when then the What’s Due thread is the thread you need to check out. In this thread, you can find out what contests and challenges are coming up. So - get going on a few challenges, Ladies, there are tons of great ones :)

The Buzz for Newbees and Oldbees Chat for new members (and old members too!)
Every Wednesday at 10 pm EST
Everyone Welcome!
If you are new to digital scrapbooking or new to DSP, or if you've been around DSP for a while but love to meet and help new members, join us in chat!

DSP is a big busy site! Are you beewildered? Do you have questions? How to get around the site? How to enter challenges? Where to start? Join us in chat to find out more about the site and digi-scrapping! We'll orient you to some of the features of DSP and answer questions to help you feel more comfortable getting around and finding what you need.


Welcome to DSP! We know you will love it!

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Member Spotlight – GrandmaCrys

This April we spotlight another DSP star – her name is Crystal, but you will probably know her as GrandmaCrys. Check out her gallery here.

Her eye-catching, beautiful layouts are seen in many DSP galleries, including the Hall Of Fame, and if you are active in the forums or post layouts in the galleries, you are sure to have had a comment from Crystal.

Describing herself as quite shy, very under confident, very indecisive, she points out that on the upside, she is a dedicated wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

Crystal says she is a “paper-style scrapper (although I never paper scrapped!), with a *twist*, in that I like to use blended photos”.

“For some unexplainable reason, I was left with very few pictures from my childhood. I DO NOT want any of my grandchildren to ever have to make that statement, so I am inspired by them to create as many layouts as possible, not only of the *special* times, but also their every-day moments. I am also inspired by the products DSP designers create and those fabulous members who use them.”

Crystal says she keeps a ‘running list’ of the photos she would like to scrap, along with their colors, but is not adverse to changing photos to black and white, sepia or recoloring if necessary.

Crystal thank you for sharing your talent and inspiration with us at DSP as the April Member Spotlight. You can find out more about April’s talented DSP Member Spotlight on the Spotlight page and visit Crystal's Gallery. Then join the Scraplift the Spotlight Challenge for your chance to win a lucky draw DSP Store Voucher.

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Featured Designers

Meryl Bartho

Creating Family Treasures

The sight of my family – daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren and well as often the extended family paging through my scrapbooks with comments like “Oh remember...”, “Oh Mum, I am so glad you made a page about that, I had forgotten” fills me with so much joy. Considering the hours (sometimes days!) I spend on pages I have yet to hear comments like “Why didn’t you add more elements” “Why didn’t you use a blue background rather than boring beige?” ... No, that fact that I have carefully nudged a flower up ten pixels and to the left five pixels is completely irrelevant, completely unimportant what they are looking at them for is the story as told in the photos, the journaling and the titling.

What are some of the ways you can ensure that your scrapbook pages become family treasures?


Journaling:

Number One for me is becoming more and more important – journaling, simply telling the story in words! It is often said that the photo tells the story – yes, it does but only up to a point. If this statement were completely true there would be no mysteries in that box of black & white photos waiting to be sorted. So often things happen which we are sure we will never forget, only to find in what seems like no time the details have blurred – the date (very, very easy to get confused on!) who said what, where it happened, what you wore, what you ate etc. Try too not to stop here – include the emotions, relationships, the story. It often amazes me to see a page in the gallery, beautifully done, with wonderful detail in the description and nothing on the actual page itself!

A few thoughts on telling the story of your page:

Consider challenging yourself to create a page or two with NO photos – an attractive page with no photos is very possible - this tells of the planning.


 


Get your children to tell the story – if they are old enough; get them to write the story. For the album I mention above (our 1988 trip) we fortunately had all the trip “stuff” virtually intact – the diaries the two girls kept, their scrapbooks, my diary, and my dear Mum kept all the letters I wrote to them (no email, no text messages then!) For years I have kept thinking about typing all this precious information out to preserve it, in what will be a beautiful printed memory. At last I have made the start on what will is a huge task... I am typing the diaries as written, spelling, punctuation errors included.

Dates – part of journaling is dating your page, DON’T skip it – you think you will never get confused but it happens all too easily – lots of lovely DATING PRODUCTS to make sure it is stylishly done.

Ephemera is printed matter, not intended to be retained or preserved. Consider taking a leaf from paper scrappers books - scan paper napkins, menus, tickets, postcards, letters, greeting cards, diary pages, maps, all of these give a wonderfully personal feel to your pages AND makes it totally unique and helps to tell the whole story.

I have a set of QuickClicks which will help you get a great jump start on a project like this – Layered Story QuickClick Collection.

Printed Albums

Then, don’t let your family treasures become buried treasure – pages which are only in folders somewhere your hard drive(s) (however well organized!) are buried treasure. I had always talked about printing my pages “one day” and then searching for something I came across a misfiled, lovely page, one I had forgotten I had even ever done. It struck me then – if I have forgotten who else has remembered?? Right away, I set to looking around at printing sites (there are a number of excellent ones) I used Artscow – cost effective once I found their specials, and I was so thrilled with the result that I have done several more.

One of the reasons I kept putting off getting pages printed was I think a fairly common one – I didn’t know how to make up the album, which pages to include. DON’T let this put you off – you family don’t mind if the pages are what you would consider “out of order” date wise, facing pages wise, all they want to do is to page through your albums and be able to say “Oh yes, remember.........”

Meryl's Links:
Team Digital Bio
Personal Gallery
Forum
DSP Products

Robyn Gough

Magnetic Bookmark - Great Gift Idea!

Start by opening an 8.5x11 inch canvas in your editing program. I am using Photoshop but you should be able to follow along in your chosen program.

Create some vertical layer guides 2inches apart, or if you prefer to use the whole page width, guides at 25%, 50%, and 75%.

Next create a horizontal layer guide at 50% to divide the page in half. This is where the fold will be. Since I have left an edge on my initial template, I can put a mark where the fold will be in the margin.

Once you have your page and guides created, create a new layer. Create a box in the first column and fill to use as a clipping mask. Clip your paper layer to the box to ensure it fits the area. Using a clipping mask enables you to move the paper around to optimum position.

Add any embellishments, and journaling or a favourite quote.

Repeat on the remaining columns. Any writing on the top part of the column will need to be upside down to appear right way up when folded. You can make each bookmark entirely different, or just make slight changes like I have.

Now they are ready to print. Simply print on cardstock or photo paper and cut into strips along bookmark edges.

Fold down the middle and place adhesive magnets at the bottom of each end of the bookmark.

Once the bookmark is complete, the magnetic ends of the bookmark will stick through pages and will no longer fall out of your books.

Products used for bookmarks in this article, Shabby Amore Value Collection, Wavy Art Borders, Luscious Lemonade Value Collection.

These bookmarks can be made to celebrate birthdays, made especially to suit the personality of the user or made just for you. If you want to make them super strong, you can laminate them before putting on the magnets.

Robyn's Links:
Team Digital Bio
Personal Gallery
Forum
DSP Products
Blog

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