Mint

Why, you ask, is there a sprig of mint on the page?  Well, I will tell you.  I am a current newbie of digital scrapbooking and I always like to run before I walk.  I have Memory Mixer and also Photoshop Elements 2.  I have been downloading cool freebie embellishments to use on pages.  I also notice that other digital scrapbookers seem to know how to remove something from a photo and turn it into a transparent embellishment.  Especially photos of people. 

OK, so I don't even know the basics of Photoshop, but I want to be able to create these embellishment thingies so I can put my grandkids into imaginary scrapbook scenes.  Can't be happy with just inserting their photos as is.  Of course not.

So I have googled and watched tutorials and checked out library books and could not figure it out.  Well, it appears that the magic word is PNG.  As in PNG file.  Don't know what it is, but JPEG keeps the frame around the embellishment, while PNG the background is transparent.  Ha. 

In my pursuit of this skill, I have gotten very good at outlining with the magnetic lasso.

Just hit "publish" and see that there IS a background around my mint.  So Blogger is not a scrapbook program.  But I made this in Memory Mixer. 

A Second Blog

My attention is a bit split right now.  I have opened a new blog to record my progress and so my kids can see some family history as it unfolds in the digital scrapbook.  So if I don't post as much, rest assured I am still cooking.

If you want to check on what I am doing with the digital project:

Scrapbooking

I finally understand the allure of scrapbooking....digital style, that is.  It all started when I began to seriously do this blog and saw all the lovely frames and buttons and decorations.  I wanted a fancy border on my blog...but how to get it??  I noticed a little logo in the border of my niece's blog, so I found Cutest Blog on the Block, and got my free background.  Then I discovered  Leeloublogdesigns, and get a monthly free desktop design.  But I wanted to be able to manipulate all these cute elements myself!
Leelou website raved about Memory Mixer software, so I researched it.  I was impressed with all the reviews, so went on Amazon and bought a disk.  Not noticing which version it was....just that it was cheap.  I started using it and it would do nothing.  So I emailed their customer and tech service, they told me Version 1 was completely outdated and the upgraded me to Version 2  and walked me through learning to do the things I wanted to do (the published instructions are not sufficient).  Thanks to Shawn and Debbie for their endless patience.

Now, I have long wanted to toss out all the boxes of old, curling photos in my closets, collected before the advent of digital cameras.  I think about putting them in an album, but nobody, including me, would look at them.....

I also have so many stories my mother told me to pass on to my children, plus all those tales my grandchildren need to know about their parents......

So I am going to choose the best photos in the boxes and create a digital album/journal.

This is my first attempt at a page for that journal.....I did not realize I could crop the scanned photo to get rid of all the white space,  pretended that it was supposed to be there.

I tried again.

But I have to go back into Adobe and adjust the photo, the top one is so much better...

(and, believe it or not, I have that dress she is wearing hanging in my closet right now...it is blue)

So if NanCooks blog entries seem a bit sporadic and brief....my attention has kind of moved elsewhere for awhile.