Made with My Cool Signs.Net1. Blogs are not personal diaries. A year ago I would have told you that blogging is not for me. My life can be full of drama at times and my reaction to it can be a bit comical, but I'd rather keep that information to myself and not share everything with the world. I joined Twitter on March 27, 2009 as a way to chat with friends and family and once my Crackberry, I mean Blackberry, replaced my regular cell phone, my Twitter usage changed tremendously. I started following other scrapbookers and began checking their blogs. I soon realized that blogs can be anything you want them to be so I started my own scrapbooking blog. Below are a few that I check regularly and more can be found on my blog list (scroll down to bottom of page).
@lainehmann's blog is a favorite of mine and incorporates life with scrapbooking.
@ScrapTiffany's blog is jam packed with great information and inspirational layouts.
@BoBunnyPress's blog is full of whimsy, craft ideas, regular contests and a free monthly download.
2. Scrapbookers are super nice, funny people that love to tweet. Most of the scrapbookers that I follow are creative moms who share stories, layouts and other helpful information via Twitter. I have been inspired by many scrapbook tweeters to create, write, design and blog. Here are some recommendations: @ktscrapbooklady, @NancyNally, @UnKit, @GetItScrapped. Go to @ohiodanielle/scrapbooking for more scrapbookers who use Twitter. And I must make a note here to say that not all scrapbookers are women. I found Eric Erickson on Twitter who is the man behind Loadofscrap.com. When I first came across @loadofscrap, I knew this person had a sense of humour to come up with such a clever name that makes me think of something other than scrapbooking, but hey, if you drop the S, I'm "Crappin' Memories 4u." Sorry, if I offended anyone, but that has been on my mind for so long, I had to share it here.
3. There are many places on the web to have fun with photos. Thanks to @10craftyfingers, I found a list of "Free Software for the digital darkroom." I downloaded Picasa and organized all my computer photos and edited many of them with ease. More photo fun came from @aliedwards when she requested a link to "create words out of random photographed letters" which lead me to Flickr Signs and Letter Photography. As a traditional scrapbooker with all these new tools, I can't help but think that I will eventually turn into a digital scrapper. I love playing with paper and have the patience to sit for hours doing precision cutting, but I also freak out if the anything goes wrong with the computer and would totally lose it if I lost my digital pages. I know I need to get over that and I will, eventually. Until then, I continue to cut and paste with real scissors and glue.
4. Scrapbookers must protect their work when posting online. The internet SHOULD be for sharing, NOT stealing. This brings me to copyright infringement, a topic brought to my attention by @ScrapbookLatino. (Note: @ScrapbookLatino is now @HacerScrapbooks). There will always be bad, rude, annoying people in the world and one of them blatantly stole from another crafter. @ScrapbookLatino's tweet "A crafter's cautionary tale about copyright infringement" directed me to Cindy McVey's blog. You can read her story here. Cindy's story is a reminder that what you create, write, design, or whatever is yours and yours alone. Your stuff belongs to you, protected by law and no piece of paper needs to say that. With that being said, Cindy recommends that you need to protect your work with watermarks and refer to CopyGator and MyFreeCopyright for added security- something I plan to do very soon and before I post any more of my photos or designs.
5. I need more time. The more people I follow, the more links I want to click, the more blogs I want to read, and then I learn about all the scrapbookers on Facebook. Ugh! I just don't have the time and Twitter is a constant reminder of that. I really should be spending more time scrapbooking and not just talking about it. After all, scrapbooking is my passion and it makes me happy when I take the time to do it...And I will, tomorrow.
