Monday, July 4, 2011

Studio J newbie / Jaxon's first year of t-ball

This is my first attempt at digital scrapbooking. I've always wanted to scrapbook, but have had no desire to do it digitally... until now. I really like the real papers, textures and embellishments too much to not use them, but last month Close to My Heart had a special where you could get a free jpeg file when you tried out their digital scrapbooking program called Studio J.

I have to say that I could find it rather addicting. This layout is pretty simple because I did it on our laptop and I really don't have many photos on that computer, so I had to make due with what I had. When I do it next time I will go down to my craft room and use my regular computer where thousands of photos reside.

I chose to feature a few shots of Jaxon's first year of t-ball back in 2008. He looks so little. :) (click on the photos to see them larger)



Studio J is great because you can play with it for free with no obligation. It's all online, so you just log on and create layouts and it saves them for up to 90 days. If you like what you've created you can have them printed on 12x12 photo paper and sent to you and just slip them into your scrapbook or you can just purchase the jpeg file and do whatever you like with that.

For me it was much faster than traditional scrapbooking because I'm such a perfectionist and it takes me forever to decide which pictures, papers and accessories I'm going to use. Digitally I could just drag things on the page, change colors, crop photos, etc... I'm sure I'll be doing more of this in the future to supplement the "real" pages. Also, I figure I can do a kind of hybrid page and have the main part of the page printed and add my own real ribbon and buttons after my pages arrive in the mail. I like that idea as well.

If you have any questions about how Studio J works you can check out the Studio J link from my website or email me for more info at kandig@comcast.net. If you enjoy it, be sure to think about purchasing a membership to save 50% off retail, plus many other perks.

Now I'm off to get some sewing projects done that have been on my to-do list for quite some time. Enjoy your 4th and be safe!