Letter
From Team Digital
HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY TO DSP!
At the end of March, we’ll be throwing a big birthday bash to celebrate the fourth birthday of the Digital Scrapbook Place. I am sure that for most of us, DSP has a spot equivalent in our hearts to a child of our very own… Isn’t it amazing that this dream-child is a scant four years old? In those short four years, DSP has absolutely changed my life. And I don’t say that glibly; the friendships, creative growth, beautiful scrapbook pages, artistic outlet, and thrill of watching the digital scrapbooking industry catch fire have been life-altering experiences. When I sit back and think about where we were four years ago, and where we are today, it boggles my head. I often wonder where we’ll be in the next four years. I can’t say enough about working with a group of amazing women with vision, direction, and energy. I trust with absolute certainty that the incomparable duo of Margie Lundy and Amanda Behrmann will lead us into an extraordinary future.
As members of this amazing Place, we all have a voice in setting trends, directing the craft, making innovation in this burgeoning industry. How does it feel to be on the cutting edge of something so fantastic? It makes me want to push boundaries, try new things… to capture life and memories, and everyday moments… to create beautiful, evocative, touching expressions of those moments… and to CAPTIVATE my family and friends with those memories. What does it elicit from you? Perhaps you feel compelled to learn new things… to push your own creative boundaries. I challenge you to go for it! Take that step! Take a class in the U, compete in the NKOTB and maybe the DET contest, try the photography challenges, explore the designer and other challenges to find and develop your own personal style. There are countless opportunities to suit any level of experience, style and interest – find your own voice and SHOUT out. YOU will help direct the entire digital scrapbooking industry!
Suzanne
Walker
DSP Senior Designer
(back to the top)
It is a wonderful opportunity to ask questions about DSP and digital scrapbooking. Whether it’s a question about navigating the site or how to get started, the girls are on hand to give you some answers. And everyone who attends the chat will get a link to a free kit! Trying out digital Scrapbooking for the first time? Use your free kit and try your hand at a layout . . . we know you will love it!! More details here including how to use the chat room!
Are you thinking about posting your first layout? There's a special first layout challenge for you. Post your first layout to DSP this month and you may be a random winner for a free page kit!!
Welcome to DSP! We
know you will love it!
(back to the top)
Are you a member of the club?
Ever wished for a monthly fix of the best digital scrapbook products money can buy delivered direct to your inbox? Well now you can have it. Club Digital is the hottest club in town. Each month you receive a wonderful selection of scrapbooking products. Something to suit every style and level of digital scrapper.
You will always receive two complete page kits, a plopper or an overlay, an alpha, word art, a font, and a set of png "stamps" for your scrapping pleasure! And don't forget the quick click template included in each Club Digital pack. Plus, Club Digital subscribers get an extra gift of an exclusive coupon for use on future purchases in the store. All this for the incredible price of $5.99 or even less! That's well over $23 value for such a great price!
The longer you subscribe, the cheaper it becomes and the better value for you.
This month you will find a superb variety of wonderful items. Included is a fantastic spring toned kit that will afford so much variety in layout styles, and a soft early summer toned kit that will make you wish for those warmer days . You will also find a useful 5 photo plopper, some wonderful Easter word art, a silver alphabet and a set of useful circle themed stamps. In addition there is a versatile 3 photo quick click and of course a great new font!
Here are some sample layouts done by our designers with this month's Club Digital!
Buy
a 3-month subscription and go into the draw to be upgraded to a 6-month
subscription! Buy a 6-month and you might win an upgrade to a 12-month
subscription! And all those who buy a 12-month subscription will go into
the draw for a $30 coupon for the DSP store!! In addition every month
there is an exclusive contest for club digital subscribers with great
prizes.
Click here to subscribe to Club Digital today!
Teaching is great fun and a wonderful way to share with friends here at DSP. This year, along with the great time I've had creating items for the store and for giveaways. I've been able to get back to one of the things I love the most - and that is teaching. I have really enjoyed creating the video tutorials for the Scrappin' with Lisa chat and sharing some of the great techniques I've learned for kit creation to help you create something extra special when you are scrapping. I hope you'll all join me Thursdays at 6pm EST the next time you want to learn a new fun scrapping technique. See you there!
Lisa Carter
DSP Senior Designer
(Be sure to check the bottom of the newsletter for a special freebie from Lisa to our newsletter readers!)
(back to the top)
Member
Spotlight: honeymoonMarch's Spotlight Member, Fiona, or as you may know her better, honeymoon! If you are looking for inspiration, then be sure to check out her gallery! Great focal points, colors, composition. Her layouts just jump out of the gallery!
Read more about Fiona here and see her wonderful gallery here. Then be sure to check out the March Scraplift the Spotlight Challenge!
Thank you for being
our March Spotlight Member!
(back to the top)
It's
Shop Time!
It’s time to
SHOP …let’s get those baskets at the ready.
Shop Time Inspiration by Erica
***********************************
COUPON
* ~ * COUPON * ~ * COUPON
Load Your
Cart and save 12%!
Coupon Instructions:
Load your cart with $30 (or more) of DSP Store Products.
Enter the following code during checkout to receive 12% off
the downloadables* on your order.
Coupon Code:
P0012DLEV2kfM
*Coupon
must be used at the time of purchase and discount cannot be applied to
Item of the Week, Club Digital or Downloadable CDs. Coupon is good March
1 through March 8, 2008 and is only available through the Newsletter.
***********************************
March is full of fantastic scrapping opportunities, with Easter, St Patrick’s Day, Mothering Sunday in the UK and Ireland (2 March), and also in many of the eastern block countries (8 March). There are so many wonderful kits especially designed with these themes in mind so go take a look!
I’d like to tell you about a great CD I found in the store this week, it was just what I was looking for to do a layout of my DH’s ‘weakness’ and my ‘handicap’ – GOLF. The Scraps of Fun - All Star Sports CD:
“Sport is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theatre where sinner can turn saint and a common man become an uncommon hero, where the past and the future can fuse with the present. Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts, as we finally become our own potential.”
~ George A. Sheehan
All sports people that are dedicated and passionate about their particular sport can relate to that quote I’m sure and ‘sports’, whether played at competitive level, just for fun or as a spectator; all contain the same rule sets that evoke the experiences of unity, power and satisfaction. Wikipedia says “Sport has an affinity with Art, the closeness of art and sport in Ancient Greek times was revealed by the nature of the Olympic Games which were celebrations of both sporting and artistic achievements, poetry, sculpture and architecture.” Nowhere can you see the passion and dedication more clearly than at DSP, in the challenges, the competitions and the DSU classes. We are all striving to be the best in what we do so this month we are encouraging you to scrap those sports stars in your family or neighborhood, big or little stars, they are all stars to us. We have a spectacular CD called, coincidentally All Star Sports purchase as either CD or downloadable, if you’re like me and live on the other side of the world and want it NOW!
Here is just a peek at some of the kits you get on the All Star Sports CD:
All
Star Sports CD
All
Star Sports Downloadable
My DH is a golf fanatic so this one came to mind for me immediately and although we don’t get too much American Football here in New Zealand we do have a huge following of our national Basketball team called the Tall Blacks. We have a great TV special called ‘Dancing with the Stars’ which I love watching and I’m sure we all have a fledgling Dancer in our family, I know some of you do because I’ve seen some wonderful LO’s of ballerinas in the galleries. This just a very small part of what you can expect with this wonderful CD, actually, you get over 140 digital graphics in 12 individual page kits – WOW what a lot FUN for such a small outlay.
Digi-Scrapper
Inspiration by Mandy
Thinking Outside The Box
So you see this lovely kit in the store, but reject it, because
- well, it's a SNOW kit and you live where there is never any snow…
or it's a BEACH kit and you live inland… Stop a minute and think.
Is that all there is that you could do with that kit? Yes a snow kit
works perfectly for snow photos, but are you limiting yourself? If you
enter a competition you may well be given a kit well outside your comfort
zone that you have to use. So if you see that lovely kit, why not try
it and use the opportunity to extend yourself and grow your skills.
Where to start: How many of you had to do Mind Maps (where you write down the central idea like snow or beach and then thinking up related ideas which radiate out from the central idea) at school to produce projects, creative writing, etc? I am sure quite a few of you do mind map without even giving thinking about it. Why not apply this technique to your scrapbooking?
Look at the kit and note down what springs to mind. For a snow kit some obvious things would be: snow, cold, winter, crisp, fresh, new, pure as the driven snow, fluffy, sparkling, icy… Perhaps these will spark an idea. Take it further. Are any of these possible characteristics ones that could apply to a person, their character? Perhaps they have a sparkling personality? How about your little, angel, baby who is fresh and pure? Or the like a snowflake, each of us is unique! Look for other associations - like fluffy white clouds. Cold, frosty, soft-serve ice-cream on a hot day… In fact there are lots of possibilities. But always keep in mind that the layout must in some way link to the kit - even if it is in a playful way.
Next look at the kit colors - what do they suggest? Are they bright - suiting a young vibrant or active person, are they pastel which would be perfect for a baby. Is the kit slightly shabby, or crisp and clean? Would it suit a graphic layout or paper? How would black and white photos look on the kit? Selective coloring? Perhaps a famous quotation, poem (like "I Hope You Dance" by Lee Ann Womack), or song lyric springs to mind. Do you dream of a snow holiday, a white Christmas… or for a beach kit, perhaps you dream of a tropical island vacation - now is your chance to really show those journaling skills.
If the kit comes with word art or a title that you might like to use, note the font type because you will want to choose a complimentary font for your layout. Match your journaling and title font to the kit and the focus of your layout.
Speaking of journaling, the Mind Map technique may well work for you if you are battling to journal. Note it all down, decide what is important and you may find the Map or Web helps you to link things when you sit down to do your journaling.
For inspiration, look at some of the amazing layouts produced by the New Kids On The Block for Round 2 using a snow kit, and see their journaling skills in Round 3. In March watch for the Digital Elite Team competition, which I am sure will amaze and inspire you.
Finally, the store has a feature that I think is just wonderful - the option to: "Click here to see layouts using this product" just below the Product Listing button. I love seeing what other people have done with a kit, and you may find that it sparks some ideas of your own.
Digi-Scrapper
Inspiration by Meg
Sometimes the photos that tell the stories we want to
tell, evoke the emotions we feel the most, and capture the moments we
want to remember are, shall we say, not so great. They are blurry, over
or under exposed, busy with no focus point, the subject isn't looking,
isn't smiling, has their eyes closed, and so on. Well, the moment is
gone and, unless you feel like staging a new photo, you are stuck with
the ones you shot. We all know that digital photography is great, in
that we can delete the 93 bad photos that are surrounding the one good
one. But what if there isn't that one good one? Here's where digital
scrapbooking can save the day!
There are so many ways you can save that memory using digital scrapbooking.
Notice I said save the "memory", not "photo"? We
can enhance or alter the photos, but it's the memories, stories, and
emotions we want to save and share. Here's a photo that captured a memory
I wanted to include in our family album, it was the best of the lot,
but far from good.
Blech! Lots of messy stuff in the background and overexposed, it's a photo that I would normally pass right by. But I had a story I wanted to tell, and this one photo could help me tell it. So, into Photoshop I went! I first had to find the focal point in all that mess, which, obviously, was my daughter and her cat. So I tightly cropped the photo in, even cutting the top of her head off a bit (sorry kiddo!) in order to completely lose the vehicle behind her. Then, dealing with the overexposure, I duplicated the photo and used the Multiply Blending mode. Here is the result:
Still far from perfect, but a step in the right direction! The tendency, when dealing with not-so-great photos, is to hide them with lots of busy backgrounds and elements. But I think we can do better than that! When planning my layout, I wanted to use a kit that would pull the eye away from the bright whites and reds in the picture, to similar spots of color elsewhere. I chose a kit from March's Featured Designer, Lisa Carter, Love Beyond Measure. It had the strong, bright colors that could enhance my photo and help me tell the story. This is what I did with it:
Surrounding
the photo with the white, lined paper, gave me a great journaling area
and pulls the viewer's eye past the overexposed white in the photo.
Using a couple of distinct color spots with the button element and the
heart (from Lauren Bavin's A
Splash of Color Add On Pack 2 creates a great diagonal of red that
helps keep the viewer from getting stuck on the bright red shirt in
the photo. Lots of open space throughout the layout diffuses the intensity
of the vivid colors and creates a restful page that shares the sweet
memory I wanted to capture.
So, my challenge to you is to go through your digital stash and find
a photo or two that represent an important memory, that might otherwise
go undocumented. Play with your photo, find a super kit that can enhance
it (not hide it!), and create!
For
more inspiration be sure to check out the DSP
Blog and sign up for the DSP
Store Newsletter! (To receive the store newsletter, after logging
into the store,
click on My Account. Scroll down to Email Notifications and click on
subscribe to newsletter and be sure you are checked to receive the emails.)
(Back to the top)
Inspiration
Station Calls
IN-SPI-RA-TION
– A stimulus
to creativity in thought or action.
This
is a call to all dedicated DSP scrapper to ‘strut your stuff’
and inspire us with your creations. Just choose any or all of the calls
for layouts this month and you could be showcased in our Newsletter or
Blog. We have a few rules
so check them out and then join in the fun.
Calls this month
will include ones for March Club Digital and the new All Sports CD. Also
if you participated in the Self Portrait challenge in February, keep your
eye out for a challenge to scrap those pictures! There will also be calls
inspired by the color blue, fantasy and magic, St. Patrick's Day and Easter,
and Family and Relationships! Check out the Inspiration
Station for all the details and the deadlines!
(back to the top)
DSU
Information
We have a super month planned
for March at DSU. If you didn't get signed up late registration goes
through March 5th. We also have a great month planned for April at DSU.
Here is a line up of our April classes:
DSU110 – Adobe Photoshop: Introduction to Digital Scrapbooking
DSU130 – Corel Paint Shop Pro: Introduction to Digital Scrapbooking
DSU190 – Layout Design (2 week class)
DSU220 – Adobe Photoshop: Brushes (Pre-requisite- DSU 110 or similar experience)
DSU270 – Adobe Photoshop Elements: Brushes
DSU332 – Jasc/Corel Paint Shop Pro: Advanced Techniques (Prerequisite DSU 331 or similar experience)
DSU351 – Photography: Home Lighting (Prerequisite DSU151 and DSU350)
If you would like more information regarding these classes, please visit our classes page. We would love to hear your suggestions on future classes! Send your suggestions and comments to me at dsu@digitalscrapbookplace.com.
Amber
Dean of DSU
(back
to the top)
Desktop
Calendar PlopperA newsletter exclusive! Specially designed ploppers for your computer desktop. This month's offering is by Lisa Carter. Download the plopper here! (Both 1024x768 and 800x600 are included.)
And just like any
of our ploppers, put your photos on a layer underneath the desktop plopper.
Angle and size them as you please, add journaling, and save it as a
jpg. Then update your desktop wallpaper background by browsing to your
new image! Voilà! Favorite photos matched with this month's calendar
to help keep you up-to-date all month! Look for a new one each month
in our newsletter!
(back to the top)
(back to the top)
(back to the top)
All new members receive a free gift. Feel free to pass this on to your friends!
You can subscribe or un-subscribe from this newsletter on our site.