My family has 3 generations who successfully work as professional photographers. I have been shown the joy of photos since I was a young child. However, until recent years, I always had to ask again the names of the people from my far past in photos. And while I knew my family had originally traveled to Canada from Russia around the turn of the century, I knew nothing of their daily lives, their hopes and their dreams. Luckily for my large family, my mother interviewed her parents in order to write the stories of their childhoods so that future generations could know them better. She then put these stories together with photographs and in 1987 created a little book with she gave to each member of the family. This is called scrapbooking; putting memories together with photos.

Computers are now readily found in homes and computer software programs have been developed through the years to make it relatively simple to place photos with journaling; this is called digital scrapbooking.

But why scrapbook digitally when paper, glue, scissors and photos have been around and so easily available? Many reasons – no mess to clean, no extra storage needed for your creative supplies, mistakes can be corrected easily, photos can be easily resized, more economical as digital supplies can be recolored and reused as often as you like, easy distribution of your work to family and/or friends through the internet or burn your layouts to a disk and send it through the postal system!

Many of us have photos hidden away in boxes, drawers, or (gasp!) non-archival photo albums. Memories for your families – old family photos, old postcards & memorabilia such as love letters during war times, marriage and birth certificates, or even ticket stubs & pamphlets for events we saw. These can all be scanned into a computer and brought to life through digital scrapbooking. And now with cameras primarily digital it allows us to take far more pictures and pick and choose which ones to keep. How to remove old photos ‘stuck’ in non archival albums.

There are many kinds of digital scrappers. For some of us it is an artistic release, for some a way to more quickly record their present day family memories such as the birth of a new baby with all the fun that follows, for some it is an easier way to record historical photographs of their family – create a visual legacy, for some it is a way to document a time and a place in history for future generations to see. Even an eye-pleasing book of family recipes can be created through digital scrapbooking!  Online digital scrapbooking galleries will show you examples of all these styles.

My own course towards digital scrapbooking began with the birth of my daughter and the invitation to a scrapbooking  ‘crop’. I was hooked instantly  on  paper scrapping. A couple years later, when the price for printing layouts dropped I delved into digi-scrapping. (My gallery) Once again, instantly hooked – in fact, I have almost never touched my paper supplies since! Coming from an artsy background and already a graphic designer, it didn’t take me long to chose to become a digital designer  and start selling my own digital scrapbooking supplies (yes, I am one of those artistic release scrappers I mentioned!!!) at Scrapbook-Elements. My designs are very colorful . Explore the store and you will see a wide variety of styles available to pick from. (Sign up for their newsletter and get freebees and interesting articles every month!) This is only one of many digital scrapbooking stores on the web - wander through the stores, wander through their galleries, be inspired to begin.

But how can you start? You will need a computer and ideally a scanner, internet connection – ideally a fast connection such as through cable, appropriate computer software, photos, and a willingness to keep those brain cells spry through learning! Be brave if you are new to all this as the reward will be well worth it. Before long, you will be creating your first page.

I’m not going to tell you exactly how to do all this – others have written brilliantly on this subject and I will link you directly to these wonderful beginner resources for Digital Scrappers.