A few months ago, Forever had a sale on their Forever Boxes.  I have many, many old Creative Memories Power Sort Boxes of photos.  Most likely I won't scrapbook most of the photos, but I still want to be able to see them.  However, I really don't want them crowding my space.  So... with the boxes on sale for 50% off - I bought the big one.  I paid full price of $519.99 and that will give me $1039.98 of digitization. Plus there is my club discount of 5% that is not even figured in there. 

I have old photo books, movie reels, VHS tapes, printed photos and old family photos to fit in the box. I added three scrapbooks, two VHS, one movie reel and one power sort box full of photos.  There was so much room left. 

I went through three boxes of Scott's mom's family photos and there is still so much room.  I will finish the fourth box and start adding in more photo albums my mom made. 

So many cool photos. Can't wait to get them in my account. 
​

Back in the 2nd half of 2015 we remodeled our basement.  Did you know that I had a vision of having digital crops down there before the process began? I wanted both places at a table and recliner seats with lap pads for digital divas to come and work on their books. December 2015 I had my first Digital Café​. We have been meeting monthly ever since. 

I started out putting together small gifts for attendees of fonts and templates.  Then gradually that morphed into digital art kits with papers, embellishments, shapes and usually 6 templates.  I even launched my own art brand:
​Digital Café Art. ​

Then in May 2020 I found out that Artisan page files are actually a proprietary file and not eligible for giveaways or to sell.  Hence the birth of the page sketch.  So, over the last 15 months I have been creating handouts and videos showing my digital scrapbooking peeps how to create my templates.  This has been a fun process of learning how to make the handouts and the videos.  My customers have missed the ease of just getting my templates, but also have learned so much more about the software. Check out my latest page sketch demo on YouTube by clicking below.​

​When we first started our Digital Cafes it was an extended time to work on our projects and I would be available to help when needed. Also, it started with snacks and morphed into two meals. All for just $15.  Well, it's time to get back to basics. It's time to get our photo projects done. ​

My Digital Cafes will be streamlined to give us all time to work on our photo projects.  Plus the fee will be more in line with what guests receive. 

Digital Café Fee: $15
Includes 12 hour crop, professional help from me & snacks and drinks. ​

Page sketches will not be permanently going away, just on a hiatus for a few months.  When I bring them back... some will be FREE and posted to YouTube and others will be in kits on my store for purchase.   I will have Virtual Sketch parties and it will give us a time to get sketches done if that is your groove.​

Itinerary Page: She used this great template from a kit. It has eight columns with a title header, a list of the days events and then a photo holder that blends into the list at the bottom of each column. It is amazing. 

To make this project, you will need:

• Cloud Solid 12×12 Cardstock
• White Solid 12×12 Cardstock
• Sorbet Paper Pack
• Sorbet Stickers
• Daisy Punch
• 12-Inch Straight Trimmer
• Foam Squares
• Tape Runner

Instructions:

1. Use the 12-Inch Straight Trimmer to cut a piece of the Cloud Cardstock to 5 ½” wide x 8 ½” long. Fold it in half to create the card base.
2. Select a piece of designer print paper from the Sorbet Paper Pack and cut it to 4” wide x 5 ¼” long. Then, use the Tape Runner to apply adhesive to the back of the designer print paper and adhere it to the front of the card base.
3. Cut a piece of White Cardstock to 3 ¾” wide x 5” long. Adhere this to the top of the previous designer print paper on the front of the card.
4. Using the Daisy Punch, punch 2 flowers from each colored paper in the Sorbet Paper Pack. Lay the flowers out where you want them and adhere them to the front of the card using the Repositionable Adhesive.
5. To give the flowers dimension, add the second flower of the same color on top of the previous flower using Foam Squares.
6. Cut a piece from the Cloud Cardstock to 1 ¼” wide x 3” long. This is where we are going to place the “Hello” Sorbet Sticker. Adhere this piece to the front of the card using your Tape Runner.
7. Take the “Hello” sticker from the Sorbet Stickers collection and put Foam Squares behind it. Then, add it to the top of the Cloud Cardstock to complete your handmade card.

At my February 18th Digital Cafe Sharon Enke shared her latest storybook.  She was telling us how she will often have events that she only has enough pictures for one page.  So, she had to come up with something for the companion page.  

That is when she started interviewing her grandchildren and create a page with a few favorite photos of that grandchild along with their interview answers.

I love that she is able to still get 7 photos on the page.  The film strip is a perfect way to display her grandson in action.  

I love how she used a notebook embellishment to place the interview on. Plus I LOVE the large prominent placement of the name on the page.  There is power in seeing your name.  Whenever her grand kids see this page they will feel important.

Whether in a traditional scrapbook or in a digital storybook creating a title page can be daunting.  At my latest Digital Cafe Sharon Enke shared her latest storybook.  When showing us her title page she explained that she didn't have one extra special photo that she wanted to use for the title page.  So she created the page below to introduce her book.

She includes the year and a quote, "A good snapshot stops a moment from running away" by Eurora Welty.  Then she added a photo of herself, the author. :)  Then she placed a tag on the page with the words, "Family stories told here."  I love that she used a bench because I usually like to sit down when I am looking through photo books.  She is inviting the reader to sit down and check out her family stories.  Love it!

It has been five years since I made this book for my daughter Emily.  She was in sixth grade at the time.  She love it so much that she hugged the book, slept with it and took it to school and church to show her friends.  There is so much power in the words of this project.  The slideshow below is of my digital book I made with Artisan, but this project does not have to be digital.  The book prompts are shown below.  You can download it and print it off.

I learned about this from my mom, Karyn Fischer.  She is an avid reader of the Creative Memories Blog and the Creative Memories Advisor Facebook page.  The directions below should be downloadable.  I don't have my own sample... yet. So, I was able to find pages shared on the CM Advisors Facebook page.  I love the idea of using the scraps to create a coordinated page 2. Happy Scrapping.

Just a little back story... for those of you who know me well know that I love photography.  This has morphed into a love of scrapbooking and with my techie skills I quickly picked up digital scrapbooking.  I have loved being part of the digital scrapbooking community and getting and sharing ideas with other digi-croppers on the Facebook page for Pixels2Pages.

Pixels2Pages started off as an almost underground community for users of the Creative Memories digital scrapbooking software - Storybook Creator.  Then they became a subscription support service.  All the while they were developing a community of storybook creator users on their Facebook page.  Pixels2Pages would share ideas, post training videos or give design challenges on their training site and then... ask their subscribers to do their homework and post it on their Facebook page.  The great thing about this is that it's fun to share your finished pages and get feedback, but also to see how others completed the challenges or used the new techniques. Fun, fun, fun.

Flash forward about 8 years and Pixels2Pages were partnered up with Forever, which is now the company that develops, sells and maintains the software I use to digital scrapbook - Artisan.  If you have an account with Forever, you get regular updates and often links to try out the training site by Pixels2Pages.  I have been noticing that they would show a link to a magazine called "Pages," but never clicked on the link.

This month there was the latest issue published.  It is an online issue that can be read through an interface called issuu.  The cover below caught my eye so I opened it.

I was paging through and... actually squealed when I saw my own page in their magazine (mine is the one on the bottom right).  Later in the issue I saw that my page was one they used to advertise their services.  What an honor!

My next thought was, hmmm... I wonder how long this magazine has been out and maybe there are more of my pages in their magazine.  So, I was browsing past issues and came to July 2016.

In this issue they didn't have just a single page of mine, but three double page spreads. Whoa!  The one one the bottom left is one I shared about our day at the zoo.  The next one is at the top right.  This is a template I created after they had a lesson on using repetition as a design element.

The third two page spread is below on the top left.  One of my favorite pages artistically.

Close ups below.

So after a high like this - what does a digi-cropper do? Well, share more pages on Pixels2Pages Facebook page - of course. :)