Bamboo Fun is Super Fun!

Wacom pen tablets make digital scrapbooking easy and fun!

Imagine sharing your new scrapbook of your grandson’s first steps not only to people who visit your home, but to friends and family around the world. That is the promise of the digital revolution starting with photography and now digital scrapbooking.

Your computer gives you a wealth of possibilities to expand your scrapbooking activities including how you make scrapbook pages and how you share them with others. From retouching and manipulating your photographs and items scanned into your PC, to creating textures and decorative items, Wacom’s pen tablet including Bamboo Fun small and medium sizes offer the perfect tool to make creating your scrapbooks easy and fun.

How does using a pen tablet make digital scrapbooking possible?

The pen tablet takes your mouse to a whole new level of control and speed. Now you can edit your photographs with the speed of a pro photographer. Using a pen to control your PC allows you to write and draw much more easily than with a mouse. Plus, you get the added benefit of natural arm position, reducing the chance repetitive stress injuries. Here are just a few of the things that using a pen tablet makes possible:

Need to take out red eye?

Just color it over with a paint brush in a photo editing software package such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. Because you handle the pen as you would any other pen or brush, editing out red eye, skin blemishes, etc. is as easy as coloring with a crayon.

Want to add a speech bubble or a handwritten message?

Just draw it onto the photo inside your photo editing software. Using a mouse to do it would be like writing “with a bar of soap” as one long-time Wacom user puts it. Natural looking handwriting on a PC can only be achieved with a pen tablet of the quality and technical sophistication that Wacom offers.

Create textures and other decorations!

A pen tablet gives new meaning to the term “handmade”. Instead of buying pre-designed paper textures and cutting and pasting, you can make your own! Share them with other digital scrapbookers in your community, or post them on worldwide internet forums for digital scrapbooking. Creativity is to be shared!

Source: http://www.wacom-asia.com

Scrapbooking Your Dreams

Have you ever heard the term: Vision Map or Vision Board?  Or perhaps you have heard of a Dream Journal or Dream Book?  (And no I am not speaking of dream interpretation books).

These books are essentially scrapbooks of dreams to come.

They are filled with photo’s and journals and stats and documents of dreams one might have for their future.  What their dream house, car or vacation might look like; what they might look like (body shape, hair color etc) and possibly even things such as the destinies of their children.

You can put anything you want in your dream book.  But why not make it a scrapbook?  Full of hopes and dreams that you have?

You can do anything you wish with this scrapbook of dreams – since much of it is a fantasy.

THEN…if you want to take it a step further, you can make affirmations about your dreams so that they do come true.  So that you do get that dream house, car and vacation.  So that you do have the dreamy relationship you could only IMAGINE you would have some day.

Affirmations attached to such a scrapbook of dreams can be a very powerful thing.  In fact, if your journals ARE your affirmations – then it’s all the more powerful.

For more information on Affirmations, I recommend you visit this Positive Affirmations site – there is a lot to read through and learn but it’s all very exciting and powerful!

Happy Dreaming!

Your Creativity & Scrapbooking

Perhaps only magic can explain creativity, that sudden “aha!” moment when it all comes together. Some have said that it’s something mysterious and puzzling, perhaps impossible to figure out. Some have said it must be divine inspiration. Creativity is simply thinking the impossible, and then doing what no one else has done before, sometimes developing completely new worlds. If you’ve taken a new approach to a problem and it works, then you’re using your creativity.

Creativity comes in many forms. It can be scientific creativity, resulting in inventions or medical cures. It can be artistic or musical, resulting in beautiful paintings, sculptures or operas and songs. It can be creative writing, resulting in novels, short stories and poems. Creativity can even be as simple as arts and crafts, such as scrapbooking or card making – things you create with your own two hands.

But how do you tap into it?

The important thing to remember is that creativity includes generating the idea or concept, as well as applying that idea and producing or manifesting the end product or result. Creativity or imagination is an integral part of being human and separates us from the animal world. Carl R. Rogers said, “The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.”

So – here is what we suggest to get your scrapooking creativity in action…

1. Get inspired…(find the desire to start a new page today).
2. Look for ideas…(here on our site, in books, in magazines – or wherever you can find them).
3. Choose the idea that excites you the most
4. Select your supplies to fullfill the idea
5. AND…grab some of the OTHER supplies that you would love to throw together with the same project.
6. Then…let the idea take form on your page (as you chose it) and ask yourself where you can use those other supplies on that same page.

From there…you begin the tapping.  It’s a gentle tap at first.  But the more you tap, the more you get used to it and then once day – soon enough you will be running with your own ideas and creating projects from scratch.

Your creative canvas can and will be anything you want it to be.  Someday soon, you will be able conceptualize the masterpiece before you even create it.  And like a graffiti artist – you will piece it together, color by color, letter by letter, item by item – until one day…your masterpiece will be your best creative expression.

Happy Scrapping.

Scrapbook Your Thoughts

Your thoughts are the reason you scrapbook.  You see an event to take place and you want to preserve your memories (your thoughts), you watch a television show that makes you think about the people you love and how you can show it and share it, you meet a new baby and you want to follow the life of this child in a way that help them learn more about themselves as they grow older…

Whatever the reason…you think about something and how you can make it a lasting moment of your life.

Scrapbooking your thoughts will do exactly that.  It will make all of the moment’s you live through or live for – a lasting moment.  You can relive every thought, every feeling, every sense – in a way that could never be done otherwise.

So what are you thinking about today?  Are you journaling that?  If not, maybe its time to create that journal.  Maybe it’s time to put your thoughts on paper – even if you can’t get them onto a layout yet.

Journaling is one of the most important parts of scrapbooking.  So if you love scrapbooking – you should appreciate the value in storing your thoughts on a daily basis until you have time to scrapbook.

You should start today too!

Happy Scrapping!

Scrapbooking Update

Hello there, this is Cijaye DePradine (owner of ScrapbookingDirections.com) I have been writing a few Scrapbooking Ideas articles lately (just to catch myself up)  - as I was WELL behind on that task. I have just recently released 4 that I would like to share with you. They are:

• Baby Scrapbook Ideas
• Kids Scrapbook Ideas
• Boy Scrapbook Ideas
• & How to Scrapbook A – Z

I have to admit – I do like them all…but I am especially partial to the “How to Scrapbook A – Z” article because I think it’s my most creative and inspirational list of Scrapbooking Ideas and Tips yet!

I would really love for you to read it. You will really learn How to Scrapbook A – Z – but you will also learn more! Check it out and then come back here and let me know what you think.