PROS:
à All the cool kids are doing it. heh.
à if you move a lot, no supplies to pack, unpack, and repack
à you don’t need storage space for products (don’t have to take over a room in your house – although dedicating an external hard drive for storage is a good idea.) No little pieces or dangerous tools to keep away from the kids.
à NO MESS TO CLEAN UP. It’s super easy to save, walk away from a layout, and come back to it later (no tying up your dining room table!) ;o)
à you buy a piece of paper once and use it over and over again forever. Change the size of the pattern, make the colors just a little darker or lighter, make the paper act as vellum, make it into a ribbon . . .
à you can make a page ONCE, then get as many copies – even in different sizes or formats – as you want. No needing to re-create it or make sub-par copies
à don’t have to get pictures printed before you scrap (or make sure you have then in the right size to work together on a page.) You get to completely skip this step!!! Very easy to do cool things with pictures, make them unusual sizes and incorporate them into fun elements
à you NEVER have to worry about running out of an alphabet sticker, and you can make an alphabet element whatever size you need it.
à once you figure things out, you can design your own elements. Talk about freedom!
à all the great digi designers! The internet evens the playing field for designers. They don’t have to associate with a larger company or have a ton of money for start-up. The good designers get noticed purely on their merit and rise to the top based on good customer service and great design.
à depending on your style, once you figure things out, making digi-pages can be a LOT faster than paper.
à if you have a blog it’s super easy to just cut and paste to turn blog entries (or material from them) into a scrapbook page
à no hammering eyelets! Just click and drag! (and you can make them as big or small as you want!)
à two words: FLAT PAGES. Flat scrapbooks, more pages fitting in one book.
à No spending money on adhesives!
à Shopping is on the internet, you don’t have to run out to shop if you need an element to finish a page (and you never “run out” once you have something.) No tantrums from your 2 year old in the scrapbook aisle! (was that just me?)
à no making mistakes with sticker placement and no need for Undu. No ruining a photo and having to run out to get it reprinted. Edit – Step Backwards is your new best friend!
à don't have to worry about a stupid husband spilling something on it (or spilling pop on it yourself)
à all the cool, funky photo manipulations! You can make photos you thought were unusable into something usable.
à easier to be precise when lining things up, especially with the grid feature
à don't have to worry about elements you add to the page being archival and damaging photos
CONS
à if you don’t print your pages, you don’t have physical evidence of your work. (SO PRINT THEM!)
à loss of revenue from you for the scrapbooking industry if you drop out of paper completely
à the torn edges look is hard to get
à lack of your own handwriting on your pages (unless you leave space and add it later.)
à some people will miss touching paper and the physical process of it all
à you miss out on the cool papers like KI!
à some people don’t like to scrap at a computer because they work at one (but some of us do it to AVOID work! Ha ha.)
à if you’re a scrapper who likes to use found objects or physical momentos (ticket stubs, receipts, etc) they are more challenging to incorporate
à some hard-core paper scrappers will look down on you and say you’re not REALLY scrappin’ – ignore them.
à if the pictures you want to scrap are primarily already physical and not coming from a digi camera, it’s more of a pain to get them into a digital format. (Then again, it may be nice to have a digital copy anyway.)
My solution to most of the CONS?
BE BI-SCRAPUAL.
DO BOTH. Have a combination of digi and paper in your books. They work together just fine. One will inspire the other and take the pressure off. You get the best of both worlds this way!
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for more fun "Why Digi-Scrap?" deep thoughts, click here for that section at jenstrange.com!
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I do feel the need to say, though, that I DO love paper scrappin'. I still scrapbook with paper and I personally don't plan to ever give it up 100%. I don't think that digi is BETTER than paper, it's just different. We're all scrappers, we're all working to get our photos and memories in some semblance of order. That's what it's all about.
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To read next entry and be able to click through individual entries by links at top, click here.
1-15-08: just finished my review of the new book "Digital & Hybrid Scrapbooking & Card-Making with Photoshop Elements," by Patty Debowski, The Digital Scrapbook Teacher.
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