One of my hobbies, and hopefully I would be able to show you a lot of them in the days to come, is scrapbooking. I do both traditional (which is the use of real, tangible materials) and digital (all computerized). It’s one of my outlets. I have a HUUUUGE stash of traditional scrapbooking materials that I’ve been acquiring for the last 5 years – from paper, to buttons, to stickers, to ribbons, tools and so much more. My husband asked me once how much, do I think, have I spent all these years on all those materials. I decided to take the fifth or he’d go nuts. Plus honestly, I really don’t know how much I’ve spent already. And keep in mind, being the cheapskate that I am, I never bought materials that weren’t dirt cheap and on a super-duper sale price. But I still have quite a lot.

About a year ago, I’ve discovered, thru my sisters, digital scrapbooking. Oh, I’ve heard of it before but I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I always said that I favored the traditional kind because I like using my hands and having the feel of the materials. But with a lot of prodding from them plus seeing all their finished layouts, I got curious and decided to try it. And of course, I didn’t want to spend on something that I might end up not liking, I just downloaded the freebies that were out there. And there’s a ton of digital scrapbook website owners who give out a few kits for free. And so it was like a day locked in a candy store for this girl.

One advantage I have is that I’m not a newbie on Photoshop. I’ve been using this software for like 10 years already and so putting up my first layout was a no-brainer for me. I picked out which photos I wanted to use and after an hour or so, my first layout was born! Admittedly tho, it wasn’t bad but it was no match to the avante-garde layouts my sisters did. They were experts! But that first layout got me hooked!

I downloaded some other freebies and bought a few. I was getting the hang of it, with a lot of help and tutoring from my sisters. I also applied to be a part of a few designers’ creative teams – you do layouts using their created kits, for free. Until one time, we talked about putting up our own stuff and selling it. We thought of the name “She’s Full of Scrap” and set up our own website. And now we’re selling our own creations in an online digital scrap store.

It’s not really easy. In fact, I had to beg off for a while due to my work schedules and some other things. But my sister remains to work on the store. I guess, among the three of us, she’s the one with the knack in designing and she’s just selling her stuff like hotcakes.

So if you’re into digital scrapbooking, I hope you visit us one of these days and check out our designs.

I haven’t digiscrap for awhile and I really miss doing it. So when my husband said “I noticed you haven’t been scrapbooking for awhile,” I decided maybe this is a good day to scrap. I’ve always wanted to use this picture of hubbie’s 5-year-old niece in one of my layouts. I took this picture about a month or two ago when she was staying for the weekend at my MIL’s house. This one, I created using a kit a did for our store.

Hmmm… maybe I should now go back to creating kits.