Sharing Your Story: Recording Life's Details with MiniBooks + Getting Started with Digital Scrapbooking

I want to introduce you to my newest book available this August (and now available for preorder):

Sharing Your Story: Recording Life's Details with Mini Books

Mini books have long been one of my favorite ways to tell stories and document information about our lives. This book features 14 new mini books I designed as well as a bunch more from a very talented group of contributors including Emily Falconbridge, Mou Saha, Maggie Holmes, Laura Kurz, and others.

The mini book featured on the cover is definitely one of my favorites as is one other project in there called "You Should Know." I am super excited for them to be brought to life and shared in the pages of the book.

If you want a peek at some mini books I have created in the past check out these links:

Family Baby Album
Summer Is
PerspectiveandYesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Always (including a PDF download of the instructions - these were classes that I taught in 2005-2006 and released as free downloads in March 2007 during the 6degrees.org contest for Autism Speaks)
December Daily
Mommy Wisdom
Fatherhood

Also, the first issue of my newsletter back in September 2006 focused on the topic of mini books.

Thanks for the excitement surrounding the release yesterday of my collection of digital scrapbooking elements through Designer Digitals. For those of you asking about having stamps made of the brushes it is something I am working on and hope to bring you in the future - stay tuned.

In the meantime if you are curious about how to use digital brushes or other elements (they don't just have to be used on digital scrapbook projects) check out these great tutorials available at Designer Digitals:

Getting Started in Digital Scrapbooking

Loading + Using Brushes (which are just like stamps) in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

And even more tutorials

Another great resource are Jessica Sprague's books: Computer Tips for ScrapbookingandComputer Tips for Scrapbooking 2. She also offers awesome, highly recommended beginner and advanced classes through her website: www.jessicasprague.com

Now here's the deal:Scrapbooking is scrapbooking. I see digital scrapbooking, or using elements from my computer, as the perfect complement to my "hands-on" projects (and my emphasis on words + photos). Since I began this creative journey back in 2002 I have always used my computer in some capacity whether it is uploading and organizing and printing my photos, to adding text to photos in Photoshop, or simply adding journaling to my projects.

As most of you know my albums are already an eclectic mix of sizes and styles. Adding in pages that are all digital or "hybrid" (which is what they call a mixture of digital and paper scrapbooking) just makes sense for me and leaves me the freedom to be as creative as I want. I love options.

The bottom line is getting the story told.

Patterned paper, computer, back of a napkin, whatever...write it down or print it out and put it in a safe place.

[ I was hoping to begin a new series this week but with Simon sick this past weekend I am having to adjust some things around. I will let you know more details when I have a firm date.]