2007 December | Scraps Of Mind

Archive for December, 2007

Posted by karooch on

December 15, 2007

Words to Live by

Welcome to Scraps of Mind. I'm delighted to see you. Why not check out the site, you'll find a bunch of great scrapbooking and blogging articles, tips and tutorials on the Articles Page. And if you enjoy this or any other articles on Scraps of Mind, I'd really appreciate you giving them a thumbs up on StumbleUpon to share them with other Scrapbookers. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to seeing more of you.

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;

It makes no noise at all,

But softly gives itself away.

~Eva Logue

Posted by karooch on

December 14, 2007

Five Freebies on Friday

Plenty of Christmas stuff around in this week’s Five Freebies on Friday. Jump in and grab these goodies.

Please do remember to leave some love when you download your freebie. It costs you nothing and means a lot to the designer.

Majula has a beautiful pastel Christmas Quick Page on her blog.
And there’s a truly elegant page kit in burgundys and golds waiting for you over at Celly’s Heart.
The Digital Arts Cafe Designers have a special Christmas Present for you. Four gorgeous mini-kit. The Collection is called Christmas Around the World. So cool.
Kyra has a whole bunch of Christmas kits on her blog With Russian/Dutch Heart including one called An Aussie Christmas.
And don’t forget the three Word Art Freebies you get each week when you subscribe to the Scraps of Mind Weekly Word Art Newsletter.

Scrapbook Max Review

This week I received in the mail a copy of Scrapbook Max from the folks at Indigo Rose Software.

So I thought, OK let’s fire this up and see how it goes. I’ll be honest with you, as a devoted Photoshop Elements user I wasn’t expecting to be terribly impressed. I had watched the introductory demo video on the site and I thought Scrapbook Max looked like a pretty basic, template driven scrapbooking tool that wouldn’t allow for much creativity.

Well as I started to get into the program I was very pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. So let’s take a closer look at this product.

What is Scrapbook Max

Scrapbook Max is an entry level digital scrapbooking software program that allows scrapbookers to easily and quickly start making their first digital scrapbooking layouts and albums with the minimum of learning curves. A short, easy to follow video gets you started quickly and in minutes you’ve created your first layout. Pretty exciting stuff for a first time digital scrapbooker.

The program comes loaded with a large range of templates which you can use and customise by moving or adding elements, resizing and adding a number of effects. You can easily and quickly import your digital photos into the templates and Max makes it easy to crop them to fit. I created three scrapbook layouts in less than fifteen minutes, and that’s indluding the initial learning curve. I used one of the template theme albums and quickly imported my photos, cropped them, added my journaling, moved some elements around and added a couple more.

If you want to mix and match the layouts in a album it’s easy to import elements from other template themes. And the program allows you to easily apply a number of effects and enhancements to your elements.

The interface is very easy to use, especially if you have an understanding of the Microsoft approach to graphic management. Promoting elements to the front or moving them behind others is done on your layouts rather than in a layers palette using ‘Bring to the Front’ and ‘Send to the Back’ buttons in the tool bar.

And when you’re done, just select Publish and choose from a range of different saving options: save for the web/email, computer folder, sideshow, movie etc.

Not just limited to scrapbooking with templates

I think one of the strengths of Scrapbook Max is that it is not just restricted to the scrapbooking elements provided in the software package. When you tire of using the stash that comes with the program you can import elements from the many thousands of scrapbooking kits available on the Internet. It is simply a matter of dragging them into the layout window and taking it from there. Scrapbook Max accepts files in all the standard formats PNG, JPEG, GIF, PSD, PDF etc. I think this lifts it above most of the other entry level Scrapbooking Software programs I have seen.

Help and support

The software program itself is pretty intuitive and it has a good Help section handy. However I suspect the real support value comes from the online Scrapbook Max Community. The site has a thriving and vigorous forum and an extensive gallery so you can see the quality of the layouts that users produce.

So to sum up

The Good,

Super easy to use. You can start producing digital scrapbook layouts in minutes.
Specifically designed for scrapbookers, rather than for designers or photographers.
All template elements are editable so you can change the shape, angle etc to suit your design.
Extensive digital element stash comes with the software.
You can use elements from other digital kits not just Scrapbook Max ones.
Easy to import your photos and crop to size.
Inexpensive and easy option for traditional scrapbookers (or those who haven’t scrapbooked before) to try out digital scrapbooking.
Free 30 day trial to give you a chance to try before you buy.

The Bad,

Although a range of effects are included they are limited and your scope for control is not as great as with the mainstream graphics editing programs. I found that there was only one drop shadow option available to me, for example.
You can’t do any of the advanced techniques such as blending. Neither could I find a way to erase part of an element.

The Ugly.

Well there’s nothing really ugly about Scrapbook Max (although I have to say I’m not all that keen on the graphic they use on the CD cover).

As an entry into the world of Digital Scrapbooking it’s a low cost, and I believe, good value option. Once your digital scrapbooking skills are established you may find that the limitations in the scope of its editing options will prompt you to move on to Photoshop Elements. Although by the looks of their online community, many people seem happy to stay with Scrapbook Max on an ongoing basis.

So if you’re thinking about trying out the world of digital scrapbooking but aren’t prepared to spend the time on a learning curve, Scrapbook Max could well be the answer for you. A nice little stocking filler this Christmas.

If you think others might find this review useful, please share it and give it a Stumble by clicking here.

Posted by karooch on

December 12, 2007

Free Tools for Color Schemes

As discussed in the first article in this Color Scheme series, a color wheel is an invaluable tool to help you select color schemes for your scrapbook layouts. There are also many online tools available for you to use.

I would urge you though, to still keep a good old fashioned color wheel handy when you launch into the world of electronic color pickers. Understanding the fundamental principles of color schemes will be an advantage that will pay dividends for you rather than just relying on the digital tools. Although some of them do let you use your color principles and have more control over your choices, many do not.

Make your own Color Wheel

You can buy a cardboard color wheel for just a few dollars. Or for the tactile crafty amongst you, you can make one yourself.

Just type “color wheel” into Google Images and choose a color wheel graphic of your choice.

Print it out and cut to shape.

Then make a smaller circular template to sit on the top (like the one on my Bazzill color wheel.

Mark and cut out 3 sections equidistant apart (hint: line them up with the Red, Yellow and Blue sections.

And then chose one section to label Key Color and cut another section directly opposite. Mark this section Complementary.

Mark the other two cut out sections Triadic.

Fix this template to your color wheel with a brad or other fixing that will allow it to rotate freely.

I like to have my Color Wheel beside me when I’m using the online color picking tools as I find it keeps me grounded in the fundamentals.

Online Color Picking Tools

There is a wealth of free online color picking tools for you to choose from to help you compose your own color schemes. Let’s look at a few.

Colors on the Web have a great easy to use ColorWizard which lets you choose your main color and then select which of the different color schemes you want to try. It will offer the color options for each scheme and also show you the different hue,saturation and shade variations you might like. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by karooch on

December 11, 2007

What Everybody Ought to Know About Blog Carnivals

Digital Scrapbook Blog Carnival The December Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival is on at Hummie’s right now. and She’ll be hosting another on December 15 in time for Christmas.

It seems that volunteers to host this have been bailing out on her and she’s left holding the bag.

I was surprised to hear this and I wondered if all scrapbooking bloggers actually understand what a Blog Carnival is about and the value it brings to both the readers and to the host blog.

What’s in it for the Readers?

From a blog reader perspective, a Blog Carnival presents you with a great list of links to useful and specific digital scrapbooking articles that you otherwise would probably not see. It’s amazing how many tips you can find here and really useful scrapbooking information.

It’s very easy for us to get stuck in the rut of reading the same blogs all the time and not branching out (and I urge all of you not to take that as a recommendation that you stop reading Scraps of Mind, we’d both be sorry if you did). And the Blog Carnival gives you a little intro to the articles so you know what they’re about before you click over.

So it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet new scrapbooking bloggers and get new scrapbooking information.

What’s in it for Article Submitters?

Many of you are maintaining a blog to help you raise your profile in the scrapbooking world and to showcase your designs.

When you submit an article to the Blog Carnival you get a link from the host when they publish the Carnival on their blog, even if the article is on someone else’s blog. This opens up the opportunity for a bunch of new readers to click and visit your blog; driving more traffic to you and giving more scrapbookers an opportunity to see your work. If the article that you submit is one of your own (and that’s perfectly acceptable), it also gets a link.

Blog Carnivals are all about opening up the blogging World to others who may not have seen it all yet (ummm…that would be everybody, I guess).

And when you make a submission, you should then let all the readers of your blog know about the latest Blog Carnival so they can visit and share in all the goodies.

What’s in it for Blog Carnival Hosts?

Now this is a real opportunity for scrapbooking bloggers to get some blog traffic juice. But I suspect that many don’t realise that.

If you host a Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival, then all the people who have articles in it or who have submitted articles to it will be letting their readers know about it and linking to in in their blogs. This is an opportunity for potentially a huge bunch of new visitors to come to your blog. If they like what they see there they might well become regular readers.

And hosting it is a doddle. People submit their nominated articles in the entry form (see the widget in my sidebar) and you get an email with all the information and links. Then when the Carnival is due to be published, you just copy/paste that information into a post and ta-da. If you like you can get a bit fancy and dress it up a bit in your own words like me, but you don’t have to, it’s the links and information that count.

So what are you waiting for?

So as you can see, being a part of the Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival has got heaps of scrapbooking and blogging benefits for all players. So come and join in. The more players in the Carnival the better it will be and we’ll all get some goodies out of it.

And just to make submitting your articles a bit easier for first timers, Hummie has put together this little Blog Carnival Tutorial for you. Or you can just Click on the Submit form on the Blog Carnival Widget and complete the form.

What’s your favourite Christmas Carol?

One of my favourite things about Christmas is Christmas Carols.

When I was a kid we used to go around the neighbourhood singing Christmas Carols outside people’s front doors in the week leading up to Christmas. (Mind you in those days kids could wander about the streets after dark without parents having the fears we have today.) And it was a great feeling, singing those wonderful Christmas hymns.

I still love Christmas Carols but unfortunately you don’t hear them as often these days. I’m not talking about Christmas Songs like Jingle Bell Rock or Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas etc. You hear those every time you watch a Christmas show on TV or walk into a shopping mall. I’m talking about real Christmas Carols. You remember the ones:

Once in Royal David City
Away in a Manger
Oh Come, All Ye Faithful
Whilst Shepherd’s Watched Their Flocks by Night
Silent Night
We Three Kings

Carols which really put you in the spirit and feeling of Christmas.

And I’m going to share my all time favourite with you here, to help you get the true feeling of Christmas flowing:

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth !
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth !

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given !
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming;
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell,
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel !

It doesn’t matter whether you’re religious or not, this is what Christmas is about. And it’s Carols like these that have meaning at Christmas, not the trite Christmas songs that focus on the commercial side of Christmas.

Do you have a favourite Christmas Carol? Let us know what it is and if it’s something not well known, perhaps you could include the words.

How to get more Traffic to Your Blog - Video Case Study

After my post earlier this week about my experiences in the Blog Mastermind Program, I received quite a few emails asking for some more information.

So here’s a Video Case Study that Yaro Starak conducted on the blog of one of the Blog Mastermind students. These case studies are done at the request of a student and are available to all students so they can learn from them and improve their own blogs. I find them incredibly helpful because Yaro discusses the strengths of each of the blogs he reviews and identifies the areas for improvement. And highlights different techniques to focus on for each blog because different blogs are seeking to achieve different things and each niche area is not the same as another.

There’s never any negative vibe to these reviews and students are very keen to have their own blog reviewed. I’ve recently requested a review of Scraps of Mind and I believe that it’s coming up soon. I’m looking forward to it as I’m hoping it will point out any areas that I have missed in the development of the site.

Anyway take a look at this video and you’ll see what I mean. The blog under the microscope is aimed at hobbyists (aquarium owners) so it has a relevance to the blogs of many readers here as our audience are also hobbyists.

I hope this will help answer some of your questions. And even if you didn’t have any questions I think you’ll find it interesting and useful to you for your own blog.

Let me know what you think.