I’ve been following a discussion on Scraps of Mind Blog about hybrid scrapbooking. Hybrid scrapbooking is simply a scrapbooking style that incorporates both traditional paper scrapbooking with elements of digital scrapbooking.
When I made my first scrapbook five or six years ago, I used the computer for my journaling, for some of the titles and to edit my digital photographs. At the time, digital scrapbooking wasn’t yet invented, let alone hybrid scrapbooking. I turned to the computer automatically. First, because I dislike my handwriting and secondly because I’m a computer person and it felt right to go this route. Plus, back in 1995, I took a ten month course in multimedia computing, intending to work in that market. The job never materialized, but the skills lent themselves well to scrapbooking.
I don’t expect I will ever completely commit to digital scrapbooking, however. I am tactile and I like the feel of the paper and the embellishments in my hands. I also like the bulk and the 3-D effects that comes only through paper scrapbooking.
That being said, I continue to use digital elements in various ways.
The video below shows a heart-shaped chipboard album that I made over the weekend. Working with a heart shape is something of a challenge in terms of sizing and cropping the photos. My solution was to scan one of the heart shaped album pages into the computer. I resized the resulting image, making the heart shape about an inch or two smaller than the album page. Using Photoshop’s paste-into command, I pasted my photographs into the image and printed them out. The resulting photos are the identical shape as the album, but are smaller, leaving room for blocking and embellishments.
Tip: If you’re going to try this variation of hybrid scrapbooking, you must be sure that the image of the album page and the photographs you use are the same resolution. Photoshop allows you to make the necessary adjustments.
