Digital Diva At Last

I honestly never thought I would arrive at this point in my life. With my computer knowledge (little though it may be), my love for design and my love for scrapbooking, Tony has always thought it would be natural for me to want to scrap digitaly. I have tried countless times if nothing more than to humor him. But I never got past the first three layers. I would get frustrated with the cheesy look of the layout and think, "Why bother? I can make real paper creations that look better than this!" And I would close out the design software and head to my scrap desk and create a beautiful layout.

Well since I have started juggling a part time job, a house, three kids and a husband (I really only just started the part time job...I've had the other responsibilities for a while!) I have had the desire to scrapbook but did NOT have the desire to make a mess...or maybe I should say I didn't have the desire to clean up my desk so I could create another mess :) Whatever the case may be, I made a profound statement after my recent discovery that I will go ahead and share with you now...I told dh "Scrapbooking is supposed to be a stress reliever NOT a stress creator. And for me, right now, making a purposeful mess on my desk right now is cause for stress!"

Okay, rewind to a couple days before that statement. I was viewing some digital calendar layouts that a fellow scrapper shared on one of my yahoo groups of which I am a member. I really thought they looked nice and when I was finally able to view them at the site (after three days of trying) I realized that all I had to do was insert a photo. All the rest of the work was done. Easy enough. So for the nominal fee of just a little over $5 I was able to "own" 12 digital calendar layouts.

While downloading these, I noticed a link to instructions and thought, "Hmmm...this might be a good time to get familiar with Photoshop." We've had the program for a few years and never could figure out how to use it. We had other image editing programs that we DID know how to use so there was no incentive to spend the time learning this particular program.

Well, that was just the beginning. I read enough instructions that a few days later when I decided to download a freebie kit on a whim, I created my very first digital layout in about 60 or 90 minutes.

What happened after that is history. I quickly became addicted gonig through the following feelings and emotions at a very rapid rate until I actually purchased a digital kit less than one week later!

• "I think I'll just scrap digital until I get back into the groove of paper scrapping"
• "I think I'll scrap important events on paper and do some just for fun layouts in digital"
• "I dunno...I'm kind of enjoying being able to do a layout in about an hour with no clean up"
• "Being able to scrap at the desk next to dh while he works on web stuff is pretty fun!"
• "I'm loving not having to haul out my trimmer every two minutes!
• "NO STICKY TAB PAPERS ALL OVER THE FLOOR!"
• "How much can I get out of my paper supplies? All I need is a computer!"

Whew! I've arrived--or wait--is there more to this journey?...yeah, I think I just got on the train. The journey is still ahead!