The Digital Scrapbook Company

Emma Powell, Moderator and
DSU Instructor

Emma Powell is the owner of Pal Photo Art graphic design and photography, but first a stay-at-home mom living in Austin, Texas. Married to Troy since 1997, they have 5 beautiful, amazing, and loud young children who feature in most of Emma's photography and digital art.

In 2003, the newly opened DSP approached Emma to become a moderator, which was followed by developing DSU classes for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro to introduce new users to the quickly growing world of digital scrapbooking. In 2007 Emma expanded her graphic design business to include custom photography.

Digital scrapping is really just an excuse to do something creative: with her family?s photos all over her artwork who wouldn?t think it was all about them? It?s also a welcome diversion from the sticky daily routine filled with bodily fluids only a mother could love!

Raised near Seattle, Washington and the seventh of eight children, she was taught digital scrapping in 2002 via online chat by her oldest sister Jennifer (a photography moderator on DSP who will kill Emma for using the word oldest, but it?s the only perk to being the baby sister). Even though Emma resisted getting yet another hobby, her husband Troy loved her sister's work so much, he eventually signed Emma up for an online group!

Emma has many other hobbies, meaning she tries a lot of things and is good at nothing! While most of her time is filled with children either crawling all over her or quietly making messes on the other side of the house while she wastes away on the computer, she tries to enjoy running her business, photography with her Nikon D300, playing the piano, online investing, and athletics. She has a jr. black belt in karate, loves gardening, baking, drawing, learning languages, religion, genealogy, and used to sew most of her family's clothing before her digital scrapping obsession. Ironically, it was sewing that got her started on digital scrapping because when her husband got tired of trying on the clothes she was making him, he encouraged her to get a different hobby! Since he knew she loved her online friends, he found her some new ones to distract her with digital scrapbooking. She finally knew what to do with those hordes of digital photos no one ever looked at and was hooked!

Self-taught in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro, she teaches DSU classes in all three programs. Emma loves the challenge of recreating complex, realistic page embellishments for her layouts, and also creating dreamy montages and using lighting effects possible only with digital imaging. She has been published, which is a miracle, in Simple Scrapbooks and Memory Makers.

Click here to see Emma's gallery!

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