Week 1 - Drop Anchor: Tell us your digi story

[keepscrappin]

Welcome to Week 1 of Camp Shoreline, campers!

To kick off our very first week together, we want everyone to drop anchor and share a piece of their digi history.
Our big question for the week is: What first reeled you into the world of digital scrapbooking?​

To get our camp conversation rolling, I'll map out my own digi journey first!

My voyage into digital scrappin' began back in 2006, right after my youngest was born. When my friend, Amy, first introduced me to the craft through a free online class at iVillage, I was incredibly skeptical. As a traditional paper scrapper for eight years—who had even taught paper scrapping classes—I didn't think I could ever get my creative fix from just pixels! I was so used to navigating bulky elements like real buttons, strings, brads, and eyelets on my pages, and I just didn't know if digital could compare. Boy, was I wrong!

Then, I picked up Photoshop Elements at Costco, which came with a CD of digital lessons from Scrapper's Guide. Once I learned the software and figured out how to shadow my layouts so they looked realistic, I was completely HOOKED!

The endless possibilities of digi completely reeled me in. Being able to undo mistakes, edit photos, resize elements, swap out papers on the fly, blend photos, and add digital paint—all without getting my hands dirty—kept me anchored to this hobby.

Best of all, I love that I can scrapbook from any shoreline. All I need to navigate a page is my laptop, my photos, and an internet connection to the Lilypad! What can I say? I'm happily anchored to this digital scrapbooking addiction of mine and I love it!

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Now it is your turn, campers! Drop your anchor in the replies below and tell us what brought you into the wonderful world of digital scrapbooking.

Note: This is just for fun and doesn't count toward the challenges and games for your participation prizes. Please do not add this to your challenges and games tracking thread.
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[HeatherB]

I think it was back in 2008 that I discovered digi scrapping. My second son was born very early and the NICU provided a space and scrapbook supplies to scrap their stories. When I brought my son home and had a baby and a toddler to look after, I quickly realized that scrapbook supplies and little ones do not mix well.

I had been working in Photoshop Elements, restoring a tiny picture of my hubby's father and discovered there were digi scrapbooking stores!! I tried it out and never looked back! Most of the stores I started with are no longer around, but TLP was always there. My first pages had no shadows and they are kind of cringe-worthy to look at now, but the memories are preserved in books, and that's what counts.

 

[jk703]

Mine was ease, space and a newborn son. Like Heather, but Shayne was born in 2004. I wasn't able to sit for long periods of time and play with all the paper products I had always used. So, digi was my turn to and I was fully invested by 2006! I would say the first 2 years I was a mix, but from 2008 when my youngest was born, all digi.

 

[Meliora]

I don't remember exactly, but when my eldest was born in 2009 I had an intense need to take photos. Bought a big camera and joined click community to learn how to use it.
Then I found i was doing nothing with the photos, and was sad about that. Thought about my late grandmother who put everything in photo books and I wanted to do that, but digitally.
I think I searched around for "making photo books digitally" etc and stumbled upon the digiscrapping world.
Here is my very first scraplift

 

[IntenseMagic]

It's definitely hard to believe that it's been 20 years since I started digiscrapping. I was never a paper scrapper, but I love to take photos. My youngest was a year old at that time. My hubby was an Adobe certified graphic designer and had used PS for years, so I asked him to teach me how to use it. His idea of "helping" me was to tell me to go look up tutorials . In doing that, I stumbled about digiscrapping and I was hooked from there.

 

[CathQuillScrap]

My first dabble in digi was sitting at work bored and I would browse around the internet download lots and lots of freebies. I used to collect them for nearly 10 years before I actually started digital scrapping in 2019... up to then I was purely paper scrapping. My bookshelves ran out of space but I didn't want to stop this amazing hobby so I joined "the dark side" and went digi. Have loved it and was never sorry I changed. I used to stalk @StefanieS back in those early days and so just knew where to land when I dabbled my feet in the wide ocean of digital sites.

 

[Karen]

It's awesome reading these stories! And funny how many of us had little babies at the time! I also discovered digi in 2006 right after my youngest son was born. I was a Creative Memories paper scrapper and just couldn't find time to haul all the paper stuff out during naptimes. I had to clean up before I even got started.

I remember seeing a layout in a scrapbooking magazine that had water droplets on it. I thought they were like acrylic stickers and I really wanted those. When I went looking at the supplies list, it led me to a site selling digital supplies. I was obsessed from them on!

 

[curio]

I really enjoyed reading all of your stories of how you got into digital scrapbooking!

@CathQuillScrap I read once on a blog years ago, a paper scrapper say she 'would never ever ever go digital', I realized only then it was considered the dark side of scrapping lol!

How it occurred for me was, I was already a graphics designer & web developer since the late 90's, but I started dabbling in digital scrapbooking thanks to an Australian online friend, named Retta. She had designed some freebie kits under Paisley Blues waay back. She's the one who introduced me to a forum, I *think* it was Pickleberrypop, around mid-2000s. Not that I knew what I was doing, but I had even participated in some color challenges in whatever forum it was - hard to remember exactly as it was around 20 years ago and a lot of life has occurred since then lol! But from there, I started dabbling with making my own pages and the graphics designer part of me quickly realized I could make kits too. Thus was born another digi-scrapper.

 

[StefanieS]

I started paper scrapbooking 22 years ago. Then I had wanted to add some brushes to a photo and fell down a rabbit hole. I took some digi classes by Jessica Sprague and got PSE. I carried on teaching scrapbooking even while I was completely Digi scrapping. I was on some designer creative teams and then a couple of store creative teams. I found a community and like minded people that loved being creative with their memory keeping and documenting. I loved event scrapbooking, getting my digi pages printed and put into post bound albums. I have switched to creating photobooks now. They take up so much less space. I can't imagine my life without photography and digital scrapbooking. I love the sense of community we have at the Lilypad, I love the amazing designers that call TLP home and the awesome way everything has flourished under Esther's leadership.

 

[dawnmarch]

I got into it through photography. I was using photoshop to edit my client photos (and my own) and wanted to do more of my own designing of cards and photo books. In searching for things like grungy edges (that were popular at the time), I stumbled across digital scrapbooking sites. I was also a paper scrapbooker at the time so the lightbulb went on! I did both paper and digi for a looooong time until I finally purged 99% of my supplies. Now, I'm back to doing some hybrid which is sort of the best of both worlds!

 

[3BluEyedBabies]

I first discovered digital back in 2007 after my second child was born and I was looking for a way to scrapbook without having to worry about the mess of digging out all the paper stuff with little fingers around. I bought a scrapbook program, I don't remember what it was called, but it had some templates and some papers and elements and then you could add your own if you wanted. I thought it was pretty cool, and I was immediately hooked!

 

[mcurtt]

It was 2006. I was inundated with old heritage photos from my family, from my husband's family. I began scanning them, but I knew that a photo without a story was just a photo, and likely to be passed over.

I happened upon an article in a magazine in June of that year. It talked about digital scrapbooking, adding photos to stories. I already had an inexpensive photo editing software program, and my first few layouts were with it. But then within a month or so, I had purchased Photoshop CS2??? I was in heaven. And so I continued creating my beloved heritage layouts. To this day, using heritage pics in a layout is still my favorite approach.

 

[jagruti patel]

My first intro to digi was getting a super mini kit in a magazine. I was like a handful of papers and elements. I think they came on a CD. I downloaded but didn't do much. Then when I was pregnant, I wanted to get caught up and wanted to go digital but did not want to use the plain photobooks you get through like Walmart or where ever. I wanted to basically make layouts. At the same time I saw that Michaels had launched a scrapbooking program called MiDesign (short lived, but long enough for me to get caught up and make 4 scrapbooks). It was pretty basic, but I was able to load in my magazine kit I mentioned above. I basically at that time used free things I found around the web. After MiDesign disappeared, I needed to find something else. I downloaded a trial for PSE 11 and taught myself via YouTube tutorials. I was hooked. Then when Nolan was turning 1, I bought my first actual kit at TLP (Nom Nom Nom by Valorie Wibbens) to use for his first birthday party (The Hungry Caterpillar themed).

I was sort of a lurker at TLP for a long while. I truly jumped in with challenges and such when the Project Mouse Faniversary happened. Being a huge Disney fan, I needed all the Project Mouse stuff!

I slowly started doing slow scraps and loving templates. When I first started digi, I thought templates were cheating at making layouts and did not really like them. But boy was I wrong about them! Funny how things change.

When I look back at my first few digi books, I'm like "oh my...." But it just shows progress and learning new things. So I love them to. Most important is the memory was captured.

Love TLP and loving Summer Camp so far!

OMG! I just looked and I still have the magazine kit. I googled to see if I could determine what magazine:
Echoes of Asia" digital scrapbooking kit by Jessica Sprague was originally released as part of a free download promotion offered through Creating Keepsakes magazine (often abbreviated as CK magazine).

 

[umyesh]

What first reeled you into the world of digital scrapbooking?

My older sister introduced me to digital scrapbooking and I was hooked right away!

 

[Mrsdudds]

I discovered digital scrapbooking around 2012 / 2013. I was a single mum struggling to find work so I decided to go to university and completed a Foundation Degree in Photography where I learned how to use Photoshop. I had done paper scrapbooking and purchased some supplies from my local craft store, but I hated paper scrapbooking. I found I was no good cutting and sticking fiddley paper elements, and got frustrated if something ended up getting stuck in wrong place on the LO. So that hobby didn't last long, a bit like when I tried to learn to crochet, knit and sew lol. My eye sight is dreadful so being able to zoom in while digi scrapbooking certainly does help.

I can't remember how I discovered digital scrapbooking, I think it was via a internet search for scrapbooking inspiration. I joined a few digital scrapbooking websites and became hooked, having the freedom to save a LO then come back to it later, move elements etc around the page so easily I loved it.

Over the years I have tried pocket scrapbooking and art journaling. I have discovered my own style and what I love to work with. I love a white background, struggle to work with patterned papers, tend to purchase element kits only and use the same background paper over and over.

And the main thing I love about digital scrapbooking is the amazing communities and friendships it brings

 

[michelepixels]

I was always making albums with memorabilia since the mid-1980's, and then, like many others, I had babies a couple of decades ago. So when I read about this new thing called digital scrapbooking in one of my scrapbooking magazines in 2005, it made so much sense. No supplies to put away to keep them out of my babies' reach! So easy to pause a layout! So much easier to acquire supplies! Command-Z! It's far superior. I sold or gave away my paper scrapping supplies (exchanged some for some albums at my then-local scrapbooking store, which hasn't existed for a decade and a half now!) and have been totally committed to digiscrapping since 2007.

 

[Brendazzle]

I got married in 2013. Planning my wedding went pretty quickly - we semi-eloped and I got my vendors locked down quickly - so I had a lot of time to think about how I wasn't printing my photos but should be. Devoting most of the wedding budget to the photographer will do that to you... I had found some freebies to make our menu and banners for our chairs and went down the rabbit hole. I joined TLP in 2014 and have been improving my skills ever since.

 

[keepscrappin]

I don't remember exactly, but when my eldest was born in 2009 I had an intense need to take photos. Bought a big camera and joined click community to learn how to use it.
Then I found i was doing nothing with the photos, and was sad about that. Thought about my late grandmother who put everything in photo books and I wanted to do that, but digitally.
I think I searched around for "making photo books digitally" etc and stumbled upon the digiscrapping world.
Here is my very first scraplift
View attachment 666590

WOW! that's pretty good blending!

 

[keepscrappin]

My first dabble in digi was sitting at work bored and I would browse around the internet download lots and lots of freebies. I used to collect them for nearly 10 years before I actually started digital scrapping in 2019... up to then I was purely paper scrapping. My bookshelves ran out of space but I didn't want to stop this amazing hobby so I joined "the dark side" and went digi. Have loved it and was never sorry I changed. I used to stalk @StefanieS back in those early days and so just knew where to land when I dabbled my feet in the wide ocean of digital sites.

oh yes, I remember the early years when I chased freebies. I'm glad you joined us on the dark side.

 

[keepscrappin]

I really enjoyed reading all of your stories of how you got into digital scrapbooking!

@CathQuillScrap I read once on a blog years ago, a paper scrapper say she 'would never ever ever go digital', I realized only then it was considered the dark side of scrapping lol!

How it occurred for me was, I was already a graphics designer & web developer since the late 90's, but I started dabbling in digital scrapbooking thanks to an Australian online friend, named Retta. She had designed some freebie kits under Paisley Blues waay back. She's the one who introduced me to a forum, I *think* it was Pickleberrypop, around mid-2000s. Not that I knew what I was doing, but I had even participated in some color challenges in whatever forum it was - hard to remember exactly as it was around 20 years ago and a lot of life has occurred since then lol! But from there, I started dabbling with making my own pages and the graphics designer part of me quickly realized I could make kits too. Thus was born another digi-scrapper.

Sounds like you were destined to become a digi scrapper and designer! Love having you here at the pad with us!