G and J

I love scrapbooking.

When I got into this vice addiction hobby, I never knew that I’d be putting in so much time, effort, money and emotion into it. Before the dawn of digital scrapbooking, I had already amassed a HUUUGE collection of stickers, papers, albums, scissors, and all sorts of embellishments one can put on a layout. I’ve done my share of printing every picture thru Walmart and Target and even Snapfish. To-date I have categorized my paper into colors, my stickers into small, medium, large and extra-large, my embellishments in neat little tiny boxes and my rolls of ribbons in roll boxes. If not for my husband jokingly warning me that he’d be donating all my stuff to Goodwill (which is his way of saying “ENOUGH!”), I would have filled the green room from top to bottom with no place left to go to.

My Brother, the Actor

I know you’d think that I’ve already spent a fortune on my materials. On the contrary, if you know where to shop, it shouldn’t be too much. I go to stores like Ollie’s, Big Lots, Gabrielle Brothers, dollar stores, and Joann’s. Even Walmart is just an option I use when I couldn’t find what I like at those stores, and Michael’s I go to when I get desperate (which doesn’t happen often). I’ve tried online stores also, but sometimes, they get too pricey once you factor the shipping and handling costs in.  So yes, I’ve invested a lot (only due to sheer volume of what I already have), but not as much as others had, still.  (At least, that’s my defense, and I’m sticking to it!)

A Happy Marriage

Then digital scrapbooking came along. This is a different ballgame. you don’t have the physical materials anymore. Just JPEG and PNG files that you’d store on your PC’s hard drive. And just as much as I deeply enjoyed the traditional scrapbooking method, I also got addicted to doing DSB. But this time around, instead of spending a fortune on digital scrapbook stores, my sisters and I decided we were going to get into the business and create materials we could sell to other scrapbookers. That’s how I’m getting my materials for free

My Sisters, My Bestfriends

If only I had more time, I would’ve earned as much as what my sisters are earning (did you hear me say it’s a good business?) but with all the other things happening in my life and with the long commute to and from work, I just don’t have the energy anymore to do some. I do collaborate with my sisters once in a while but I’ve never made a single kit all by myself. The digital scrapbooking business is highly competitive and to really stand out, your kits require a lot of attention to details and clean and careful editing aside from being very innovative. Something that would need a lot of time… something I don’t have the luxury right now. *sigh*

Cousins

Digital scrapbooking really comes in handy when most of people now take pictures using their digital cameras. Unlike before when if you want to have a digital copy of your photos, you’d need a scanner and be able to tweak and adjust colors in a photo editor to get the right hues. A lot of people still do that but only for photos dated BD (before digital). Also, with digitals, you don’t need a whole room to store all your materials. All you need is a good-sized hard drive, and they’re getting cheaper and cheaper as we go into the age of infinity and beyond. Gosh, I got my half a terabye of external hard drive for $85. (1 Terabyte = 1 Million Gigabytes – that’s 200,000 high resolution digital photos!) And photo editor softwares are getting easier to learn. And even if they look like rocket science to you, google would help you look for a tutorial fit for your mental capacity.

But see, that’s just the techie side of it all. Scrapbooking, whether digital or traditional is more than that. It doesn’t matter if your layouts turn out so striking or just simple, whether you used the most expensive materials or just grab what you have lying at home (or free from the digital stores). ‘Bottom line is, you’re doing this for someone you love, about someone you love. That’s where the time, effort and emotion come in play. For every photo, for every embellishment or element turned this way or that, for every word of endearment you put in, you’re putting it in for the people in the photo, the people you care about. That’s what makes scrapbooking such a personal and intimate activity.

And this is one addiction I will gladly subject myself to