Digital scrapbooks are fun way to save time, money and mess

By Susan Whitney
Deseret Morning News
Published: Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005 11:55 a.m. MDT
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When April Oaks went from paper scrapbooks to digital scrapbooks, she didn't do it to save money. She did it because she had a toddler and a newborn. She didn't want scissors and glue sitting out.

She'd been scrapbooking the regular way since she was 8 years old. She knew how good it felt to handle ribbon and colorful paper. So she was surprised that she so easily came to prefer scrapbooking on computers.

Oaks talks about digital with a passion that's contagious. She even made believers of her two sisters, who had never liked scrapbooking. (Well, to be fair, one of her sisters had never really tried traditional scrapbooking. She got overwhelmed just thinking about the supplies she'd have to buy.)

Oaks is winning awards, now, for her digital designs. She is featured in the September issue of "Scrapbooking, Etc." and the October issue of "Creating Keepsakes."

And she's making money with digital scrapbooking. She creates and sells scrapbook computer discs and teaches classes on how to use them. She has two CDs out, so far. They include dozens of papers and eyelets and ribbons — all the design elements you'd use for a traditional scrapbook.

Oaks will be teaching two classes at an upcoming scrapbooking convention. (Admission is $10 for the Scrapbooking USA convention at the South Towne Expo Center on Friday, 9 a.m. to midnight, and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.)

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"My CDs are not programs, they are just graphics," Oaks says. She stresses that you can do your own digital scrapbooking, without buying her CDs, using your computer's art program. (It has to be a fairly sophisticated program, something like Microsoft Digital Images, or JASC Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop.)

Her top reason for preferring digital scrapbooking is that she can hold baby Megan on her lap while she does it, says Oaks. Also, it is fast. And Oaks likes the fact that she can e-mail her pages to relatives. If she wants to put her digital pages in a book, she can print them out, punch holes, and put them in a binder.

Somewhere along the digital path, Oaks realized how much money she was saving. She figures paper scrapbookers spend $2 to $5 on a layout. (Although another expert says she's seen people spend $20 on one page.)

With photos from a digital camera and an online layout, Oaks spends next to nothing. If she prints out a page, she figures it costs 25 cents in paper and ink.

As for the stacks of paper and rolls of ribbon she used to keep on hand? "I sold them on eBay," she says. "And now I have a lot more room in my house."

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