I’ve had a blast designing and preparing the designs of our talented artists for new digital scrapbook collections in our Village Download Depot. I have something to admit - I have little experience making scrapbooks the way most people do. I have a very old fashioned scrapbook from high school, and long before the scrapbook craze began, I made scrapbooks for both my babies (now 27 and 23) and for their missions. But I haven’t bought scrapbook paper or embellishments etc to do it. I decorated them by hand or designed them on my computer myself.
Over the years I have noticed the scrapbook section of the local craft stores I frequent getting larger and larger - taking up more and more floor space. One store has devoted well over 50% of their store to scrapbooking products. It blows my mind.
But right here in the heart of the seedbed for this international passion for scrapbooking, where it all started - along the Wasatch Front - you can hardly find any LDS-themed scrapbook paper or embellishments/tools anymore. The general market is so immense, our little LDS-niche is hardly worth sneezing at - even for scrapbook companies I drive past along I-15, owned and operated by latter-day saints who once catered to their LDS customers.
Well, we all have birthdays and holidays and vacations and other memorable occasions we want to scrap like the general population - but what about those uniquely LDS aspects of our lives that we also want to make a permanent and beautiful record of?
That’s where LDV steps in. We have a growing array of LDS-themed scrapbook products, along with the traditional general/seasonal themes, and we can offer it because our products are digital! We leave the printing, if you even decide to print - to you! That allows us to design to our hearts’ content without worrying if we can sell 10,000 of any design. Printing and manufacturing prices go down with volume - so most companies have to pick and choose what products they will feature with that high-volume requirement.
Problem - not everyone knows how to use digital images to make beautiful scrapbooks! I do my designing with Adobe Photoshop - oh what cool things I can do with that robust program! But average Josephine scrapbook enthusiast isn’t going to pay the high ticket price for that high-end professional software, nor have the time to learn how to use it.
Well - I decided to test some affordable digital scrapbook software out. I wanted to see if it was easy to use, could do cool stuff, and if I could import images from our Village Download Depot collections into a scrapbook page using it. I read reviews about various products - and it was very hard to tell if they allow you to import images from outside their programs - so there was nothing to do but buy a package that sounded good and try it. I picked Nova Development’s Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 3.0. It got the highest ratings in the reviews I read and only cost $29.95 direct from the manufacturer (you might find it cheaper elsewhere).
It arrived in a timely fashion and installed easily onto my computer. They have good documentation to step you through the process. It comes with tons of templates and clipart for unlimited designs, and has easy to use tools that do really nice things you would need scrapbook software to do. But the true test for me was, of course, could I use my own Village Download Depot images and Fonts to create scrapbook pages with it?
WAHOO! YES! It worked - and was so easy! With any project open in the editing window, click on the INSERT menu option and choose GRAPHIC then FROM FILE. You then find the image you want to insert from your DownloadDepot folders and viola! It is inserted and can be edited as needed! Now, granted, I am used to Photoshop - so the ease of use of this software seemed dreamy to me - but I really believe anyone could use this to create lovely digital scrapbook pages, import our great LDS scrapbook elements into it - edit them freely so they are just the right size, shape, direction etc - and print out beautiful pages, or simply save them in a form anyone can view them and email them to your family and friends.
As much as most people spend on their scrapbook supplies, this software is a small price to pay for a great tool.
Since most people have home printers that only print on 8.5×11″ - Scrapbook Factory templates are for that size paper - but they also allow you to select 12×12 layouts - and if you have a wide format printer, you can print those yourself, or send the files to a copy center that does wide format printing, or use an online service that will print your 12×12 pages and ship them to you. I am researching printers, scrapbook papers for inkjet printers and scrapbook printing services and will write about those more in a future post.
Debra
