Many of you may have had a scrapbook when you were a child. You cut pages out of magazines or were given packets of scrap's (remember those) and you happily pasted them onto the pages of your scrapbook.

You may have even graduated to scrapbooking where you bought 12 x 12 inch papers, made copies of your photos and scrapped your pages adding embellishments like flowers and ribbons.

Well Digital Scrapbooking is the same concept; it's just that your pages are created on a computer and there are benefits to this.

I know that I avoided the idea of scrapbooking because I already had a collection of fabric that I didn't want to cut up in case I ruined it and I could see the same happening with scrapbook papers. Let alone the idea of cutting up photos.

Then I discovered digital scrapbooking. No glue, no cutting (or at least not permanently) and what's more no mess.

That's where I met Lauren. She was the head designer at Digital Scrapbook Place and would you believe it, was from New Zealand too.

Why Scrapbook Your Family History?

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Well it certainly does with Family History.

Here's a Family Groups Sheet from Lauren's family history.

John Middlebrook Family Group Sheet

Here's the same information presented on a scrapbooked page.

John Middlebrook Digital Page

Which do you think your family will look at and read?

What do I need to start?

To start digital scrapbooking you are going to need a photo editing program. We suggest Adobe Photoshop Elements.

From there you will need some digital scrapbooking materials, so check out our shop. There you will find:

  • Kits - a co-ordinating collection of papers and elements like flowers, ribbons and frames.

Pieces of the Past Contact Sheet

  • Backgrounds - a collection of papers.
  • Elements - these could be frames, photo mats, journalling mats.. just about anything.
  • Word Art - titles for your pages.
  • Instant Pages - we've designed the page for you. Just add your photos, title and journalling.

The great thing about these products is that you can mix and match them, use them multiple times and resize to match your photos.

The added benefit, it's really easy to make copies of your pages to share with other family members.

If you want to see some ideas of how to use the kits have a look at our Heritage Scrapbooking board on Pinterest.

We also run classes in Digital Scrapbooking. If you're interested, see where we are next on our Workshops and Presentations page. If we don't have a class near you, please Contact Us as we're happy to discuss teaching class where you live.

The Designer who loves family history

Lauren Bavin

Lauren Bavin  has extensive experience with Adobe Photoshop and this allows her to create high quality, eye catching products and layouts.

She was the head designer at Digital Scrapbook Place from its inception in 2004 until 2013 and has had articles published inUp2Scrap andCreative TECHniques andScrapbooking Memories magazines and layouts in several different publications.

In the last few years she has been teaching students from around the world how to use Photoshop and Photoshop Elements including how to design their own scrapbooking papers and elements.

She is an avid photographer and in the past few years has completed the challenge of taking a photo a day for 365 days. She has lead photo-walks in New Zealand and the USA.

Through her blog My Past Whispers you can read more of her family history research exploits and see how she is able to take what she finds, and transform it into a beautifully illustrated page ready to share with family.

Lauren's digital scrapbooking products are featured in our store.