Traditional or Digital Scrapbooking?

Can’t decide which one to go for? You can actually go for both if you wish. I haven’t made the leap from traditional to digital scrapbooking even after purchasing a photoshop software program.

As other traditional scrapbookers like me, I prefer the bumpy pages and the dimension in traditional albums, filled with chipboard letters and colorful ribbons and buttons, that are so popular now.

Here are what other scrapbookers have to say:

Heather Blanton, owner of Scrapbooks by You says

There’s also a matter of longevity. Archive-quality paper can keep digital pages relatively vibrant, but the inks are still unstable. The industry is still working on stabilizing the inks.

On the question of traditional vs. technology: “You have to evaluate where you want your scrapbook to be in 100 years. Some people say they have all their photos on CD. I say if a big ice storm comes along and wipes out the electricity and your computer, you won’t be able to look at your pictures. I’m going to be looking at my pictures in my scrapbook in my lap. The digital scrapbooks are beautiful, but there’s something to be said for the old-timey approach.”

Blanton, who for years worked as a graphic designer, has done some scrapbooking on the computer, but says, “It doesn’t pull my trigger. To me it’s too much like laying out an ad.” She returned to traditional scrapbooking about six years ago. “The digital programs are superb but not as near as personal,” Blanton says.

Samira Wirfs of Morrisville says

She isn’t sure she’d ever go completely digital. Just like a lot of other scrapbookers, she likes to shop for papers and doodads to add to her pages. And she likes to play with all those embellishments. Some of her pages even include folders, which open to reveal a lengthy journal entry.

But she also loves fonts and has downloaded about 2,500 to her computer to use on her pages, many of which she scans and posts online on scrapbooking Web sites for critique from other scrapbookers.

She’s about to get a Wacom Tablet, a computer gadget that will allow her to doctor her pictures even more and to create her own fonts. The tablet also has a wireless mouse and pen.

“It’s definitely going to enhance my scrapbooking,” says Wirfs, who is on a design team at the Apex store Paper Playground and works in human resources. She also is working part-time at Archivers.

Angelastro says

She expects more people will mix digital and traditional scrapbooking to create their pages. A lot of them will switch back and forth quite evenhandedly. The watchword for the future is that you don’t have to choose. You can do some projects digital where it makes more sense and have fun with paper. In years past, people felt like they fell into one camp or the other. What we see from the statistics is that there’s an awful lot of people playing on both sides of the fence.”

Via News Observer