CLS Spring Blog Hop - Love Each Other!

A happy hello to you and welcome to stop #2 on the Creative Life Scrapbooking Spring Blog Hop! You've probably arrived from Diana's blog and at the end of this post I'll send you off to your next stop on Krista's blog! I'll also have a link to ALL six of the blog hop stops at the bottom of the page.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, many of us have been scrapbooking our experiences and the effect it has had our families, towns & communities and indeed, the world. As a result, lots of scrapbook manufacturers worked quickly to create products that could be used in conjunction with photos and journaling to document this historic world-wide event. I'd seen lots of new collections shared on social media, but was hoping that Creative Memories would design and manufacture a themed kit. It was worth waiting for as I absolutely love the Theme Pack they created, fittingly titled Love Each Other. It features four double-sided patterned papers (one of which is a lined paper that provides lots of room for documenting your experiences!), a large sticker sheet and a sheet of Cloud Cardstock. And best of all, all profits from "Love Each Other" are going to support World Vision! 

I ordered my physical Theme Pack last week when it first launched, but it was so popular that CM has already sold through the amount of kits that they produced! Rest assured they are manufacturing more and you can keep an eye on the inventory availability on the CM website. But, if you are itching to get started on your Covid-19 memory-keeping, you might want to consider purchasing the Digital Love Each Other Kit and using it to create digital page like I'm sharing with you today!

As much as I love scrapbooking with physical supplies and will never give that up, digital scrapbooking is a great solution in so many situations such as when I'm travelling, when I need to create duplicate pages or albums, or when I just can't find the traditional supplies I want! There's a HUGE amount of digital supplies available at very good price points, and Creative Memories offers digital artwork kits for pretty much every traditional kit that they make so I can make traditional AND digital pages with the same collections. I often get asked what programs I use for my digital scrapbooking and where I get my pages printed, so I'll share all that with you as well...let's get started!

To create my digital scrapbook pages, I use Artisan Software by Forever.  Here's a quick history lesson: This is the same software that was marketed by the old Creative Memories as Storybook Creator/Storybook Creator +. When CM closed due to bankruptcy, the software was renamed Artisan and was marketed by it's original developer Panstoria. Then, Panstoria was purchased by Forever, who continues to sell and support Artisan software. Artisan 5 is currently on sale for 30% off until May 31st 2020 with the code BLACKFRIDAYMAY20. You can get all the details and specs at https://www.forever.com/ambassador/noreen-smith, then choose "Scrapbooking". And if you are not already a Forever customer, you'll also receive a $15.00 coupon when you set up your Forever Account with me as your ambassador!

Forever also offers lots of digital art packages that import into Artisan with one click, but you can use images and packages from other designers that are in JPG/PNG format as well. To see how to download, import and use Creative Memories Digital Art Kits in Artisan, watch this video!

To print digital scrapbook pages you can choose from many online printers, but I tend to save all my digital pages and then send them as an Artisan project to Forever when there is a print sale, or I save the layout as JPG image and then import it and print it as a Custom Refill Page through Creative Memories. Both options give me great quality prints that I can add in to my regular scrapbooks. 

Now as for designing a digital page, I approach it much like I would a traditional page: I can start with a sketch, or an inspiration page that I like, use with a pre-made digital page template, or just add photos, shapes and embellishments that I want to use to an empty digital canvas and move them around until I'm happy with the result. For this layout I'm starting with a sketch that I initially designed a few years back but revisited and updated to accommodate the photos that I want to use.

After I design a sketch in Artisan I can change up any element to see what the page will look like until I come up with a finished version that I want to print. Here are some variations I played around with using the papers and embellishments in the Love Each Other Digital Kit.

All of these looked pretty good, but I finally decided to use the navy heart patterned paper as the background of my layout with the blue lined and red crisscross papers for the banner strips. I quickly imported my photos and cropped the standard size ones into the 4" x 4" sizes planned for in the sketch. Then I matted them with solid blue that would be the equivalent to the Cloud Cardstock in the physical Theme Pack.

One of the benefits of digital scrapbooking is that I can change the colour of elements as desired. For example, the sticker I used for my title, "The New Normal" is a mustard yellow in the physical kit, but I was able to change it to a more harmonious pinkish-red with just a click of a button in the software. I was also able to resize the embellishments and add a white outline and a shadow to each to make them look more like the physical stickers. And when I added my journaling, I was able to choose from all the fonts I have installed on my computer and adapt the size to fit. So much neater than my own handwriting and I can usually fit more digital text on a layout than handwritten! (PS... Font used is Freestyle Script.)

If I had created this page with the physical Theme Pack I would have obviously used up a fair bit of the papers and stickers, but with the Digital Kit I can re-use all the elements for as many layouts about the Covid-19 Pandemic as I want to! My thrifty heart loves that! There are so many benefits to incorporating digital scrappboking into your memory-keeping...if you are interested in getting started with it, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have in the comments below or by dropping me an email!

*All Creative Memories products featured in these projects are available in Canada on my CM website (or you can find CM Advisors in the US and other countries by using the Advisor Lookup feature) and all Forever products featured are available internationally on my Forever website. If you are interested in joining my cross-Canada team of CM Advisors, feel free to contact me, or click on the "Join" tab on my CM website. Finally, please join me on my Facebook Page, YouTube Channel and  Instagram feed for more ideas and inspiration, and check out the online courses I teach. 

Now I'll send you over to Krista's Blog to see her project. Make sure to hop on through all six projects featured in today's hop!

1. Stop #1 - Diana Brinsley's Blog

1. Stop #2 - You are here!

1. Stop #3 - Krista French's Blog

1. Stop #4 - Meggan Jacks' Blog

1. Stop #5 - Tammy McEwen's Blog

1. Stop #6 - Karyn McDermaid-Rolfe's Blog

Thanks so much for joining us today. Make sure to like and follow our Creative Life Scrapbooking Facebook page for lots more inspiration!

Happy Scrapping!