Friday, May 22, 2009

Hooah Sneak Preview

Hi all,

We have mentioned a few time that we will be launching a new wholesale line. This means you will be able to buy our paper and digi products at your favorite scrapbooking store or website very soon. So we though it was time to give you a sneak preview of what we are working on. The first preview is our new line of Army themed products. The name of the line is Hooah. This line is will be our first products to come in both paper and digital.

Hooah : Army Themed Digital Scrapbooking Kit

The products we are offering include seven patterned papers, five solid papers, and a digi kit / premade layout cd. These papers are perfect for scrapping about your loved one who has or is defedning our country.

We hope you enjoy and thank you for your time

Jeff

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Getting Back Up & Running

Hi all,

Well shortly after my last blog post, the power in my 2 year old laptop died. I am not talking the battery or the power cord it was the actual power socket on the laptop itself. Well luckily I have a service plan with Dell. After waiting for the back logged parts to arrive, I got a great service call from the local tech. He stripped down and rebuilt the laptop with the new parts at a speed that would make a marine reassembling a gun envy. So now that I have my lap top back what does that mean?

Well in the day or so we will be posting a sneak peak at one of the first product lines for our new wholesale offering. What do I mean by wholesale? well starting the end of May we will be offering our new line of product directly to you local scrapbook shop, and favorite scrapbooking website. These products will be available and both digital and paper.

Some people have said why bother offering both. Why would someone want the paper version if they can get th digital version. Well here is our vision. Paper scrappers and crafters make cards, invitations, scrapbooks, and paper art using the paper. However we don't always have room for all the photos, and sometimes we dont have just photos we have video. Well with our product lines you can easily make your paper crafts, and then if you make a dvd, or slide show you can easily use the same designs with out needing to scan or photograph your paper project. We think its the best of both worlds.

Well time to make up for the downtime when the laptop was dead.

thanks for your time

Jeff

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Check Out the May Hybid Challenge - May Flowers

Hi All,

We just added our new May Hybrid Challenge to BWScrapbooking.

This month our hybrid challenge we take some influence from the month of May, so it is about May Flowers. Your challenge is two fold

1. to scrap a page using a our Spring Romance products. you can either buy the digi kit and do a digi layout that you then print, or you can order the real paper pack and scrap ir.

2. We want you to use real flowers or foliage (leaves, herbs, grass, etc...) as elements on the page. We are talking real here, but your can use silk and paper as well if need be.

Once you have completed your page post it here by 5pm EDT May 29th. All entries posted here will be voted on. Then on June 1st we will announce the winner. The winner will receive a $10 gift card for our shop goo for anything.

Note: there will be a limit of 2 layouts per purchase.

So make sure to check it out, good luck and let the best layout win.

http://www.bwscrapbooking.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244

Happy Mother's Day

Hello all,

I want to send out a happy mothers day to all our followers out there. Make sure mom is taken care of, and most importantly take lots of pictures of the day =)

This morning my son gave my dear wife a little envelope that came from Scrapblog. She was so surprised and truly enjoyed her little photo card that my son helped make. Kudos to th lovely people at Scrapblog for making a simple tool and offering free Mother's day cards.

So my friends and followers what on your to do list today? Comment let us know what you think.

Thaks for your time

Jeff

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Last Minute Hybrid Project Ideas for Mother's Day

So its Thursday and this Sunday is Mother's Day. What?? You still haven,t gotten anything for dear old mom. You went to the card store and see they have slim pickings on selection. What do you do?? Well lets see what we can do.

Cards

Now a days there are so many sites with printable templates that you can use. Simply do a web search on "printable mothers day card". Most of the resulting sites offer patterns for cards that you can print with your typical ink jet printer. For example here is a card from FamilyFun.com.

Mother's Day Card
Simply click on the link and a pdf file will open. You can either print this card out and color it using ink, watercolors, or whatever you want. If your more adventurous you can do the following.

Open the PDF in your favorite graphics program. Use the white areas as selection to make clipping masks and insert your favorite digi scrapbooking patterns (like our Mommas Secret Garden Kit). Hmm you want to do something more? Take the card you downloaded and use it to define how the paper will be folded and using your graphics program make an inside message. Use photos poems, or just a special note to your mom.

Once your done. Print out the pdf. I suggest using a heavy stock paper. I know most craft stores and LSSs will have plain white card stock available in 8 1/2 x 11. Using the heavy stock paper will let the card remain rigid even after having both sides printed.

Now take that paper the you just printed, and set it up to print on the opposite side and run it through. Some printers will need you to flip it over, some will need you to put the paper. If you are not sure go ahead and try it and if it double prints both images on the same side, no worries you can try again.

Now that you have your card printed, take a ruler and find the half way point of the paper height ( half of 11 inches is 5 1/2 inches) . Make a make along the sides. now take the ruler and line it up on the two marks. Fold the paper using the ruler. One the paper is folded take the ruler and run it along the fold.

Now your done. You have a nice custom mothers day card ready to be brought to mom on Sunday, or sent out through the mail.


Thanks for your time

J

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What Programs Can Do Digi

Hi all,

So today I was cruising some forums, and a question came up. A poster went to the digi area of the site and said Hi I usually do paper scrapping, but would really like to do digi. What do I need. A couple people took a crack at it, and you basically got a adobe response and a paint shop pro response. Now for those of you that don't know those names let me take a step back. When it comes to digi their are a couple big players in the software arena that digi designer as well as scrapbookers use.

Adobe

First is Adobe's Photoshop family of products. Adobe is the big name in graphics. They have been offering Adobe Photoshop since I was in college i the early 90s. There are two versions of PHotshop. First their Elements and then there is CS. Element s is the stripped down watered down version that acts as a simple place for some one interested in doing computer graphics to get started. it has all you usal tool tha tyou would need to do simple editing of photos and assembling layouts. Its also nice becuase it has a lower price than CS and really lets you get your feet wet before investing a chunk of money in to CS.

That brings us to CS. Originally Adobe only made one version of photoshop, and then around version 7 Adobe decided to streamline all their products and offer them under the CS version. CS stood for Creative Suite. The difference between element and CS, is CS gives you a much wider range of tools, image editing options, more power. Basically a tool that ywould easily allow you to make a chistmas card of you shaking hands with the president.

So when looking at the Adobe side the choices really boil down to are you just making layouts with your images, your words, and maybe some products you got online, or are you looking to design your pages from the ground up.

Corel Paint Shop Pro

On the other side of the street we have the other favorite in the digi world, Corel Paint Shop Pro, or PSP as its usually referred to. PSP was originally made by a comapny ASC. their focus make a low priced alternative to Photoshop. You would get most of the same tool, the ability to use filters/plugins, and pretty much everything else. The key defference being it was a lot cheaper. Afew years back Jasc was bought out by Corel. Today Paint Shop pro is still one of the favorites in the graphics community.

The Others

Now these two companies are not the only solutions if you want a graphics phogram. In fact their are some other programs that are cheaper and some that are even free. Here is a listing of some of them

GIMP is a free software (yes FREE.) raster graphics editor used to process digital photographs and other graphics. Primarily GIMP is used for photo enhancement. Uses include resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image components, and converting between different image formats. as well as creating graphics and logos. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format. It is often used as a replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the commercial printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone.

Microsoft Photo Editor was an image-editing application found in Microsoft Office 97–XP versions for Windows. The program was a tool for doing raster graphics with editing tools to texturize, negative, for gamma control, GIF transparency and many others.

Paint.NET is a raster graphics editing program for Microsoft Windows.Paint.NET has evolved from a simple replacement for the Microsoft Paint program, which is included with Windows, into a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins. It is often used as a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Now this is just a few of the many programs out there, but I am not goinfg to list them all out here. I think Wikepedia has done a good job listing them out. You can click here to review them if you like. The bottom line is there are many solutions out their. So before you put down your hard earned money on a program, take a look around.

Now no matter what option you go with their are a few things you want to make sure of.

1. Can the pgogram read images that are jpeg, gif, png formats. More importanly can it read the images you camrea creates?

2. do a google search online for INSERTPROGRAM NAME tutorials. This will let you know whats out their for resources and people to ask questions of

3. make sure it will handle images that are 300dpi. if you want to print your digi items

4. If you want to stay digi and show off your layouts as slide show can the graphics program make slide shows, or at least save the image in a format those program use.

Now for those of you who are not really software savy, or you feel you cant draw a straight line event using a paint program, well your not alone. In fact there are any ( and I do mean many) solutions out there that all you need to do is point click, drag, drop. From you favorite scrap magazines, to special programs from your favorite digi designer, to a really sweet free option that I use, there are many solutions that can use to make your pages and not worry about a paint brush.

Many of your favorite scrapbook magaziesn out their have worked software makers and created scrapbook programs that come complete with digi elements. Infact kodak, polaroid, and others have branded programs that let you quickly assemble scrapbooks in a few minutes.

Next there are many services out there that allow you to make your scrapbooks, and if it suites you need you can then print them out. One example is a site by a friend of my Photobooks etc by Kim Guymon, allows you to download a program, select a theme, insert your images and create a scrapbook that can be sent off and printed out. Another option is a great site I also use, Scrapblog.com. Scrapblog allows you to go online upload your phtos, and then using their themes, and marketplace items allotw you to quild rich quick ad easy scrapbook pages that you can show off as slide shows, or you can take it a step further and have the book printed out.

So that is my primer in to the question what software do I need to do digital scrapbooking. So to review there are a lot of solutions out their some cost money, and some are free. What you need to do is ask yourself, how much can I spend, and what format files does my camera make,

I hope this information has helped. If its not clear, please comment and I will try to get your and answer, or write some more info.







Sunday, May 3, 2009

Mothers Day Card from Scrapblog

Hi all,

I finally finished my wife's mothers day card through Scrapblog. They definitely have a lot of themes and elements to get for free. When you need to make cards or albums make sure to check them out

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Now Blogging from my old treo

Hi all,
I just set up my phone to sms to this page. Seems straight forward but you cant add too much. So I might just use twitter on the road and blog from home or when I can get to the laptop. So this opens the question. What technology do you use on the go. Do you take photos with your phone. Do you use cell photos, sms messages and other modern features of the phone to scrap?

We want to hear. Thanks for your time

J

Happy {int}National Scrapbooking Day 09

Hello All,

Checking Out NSD at our LOCAL Stores:

Happy National Scrapbooking Day. Today is the day to embrace your craft, and to either try something new, or to help someone else learn what fun it is to make projects that will spotlight those favorite memories. So what are you doing today. Feel free to comment back and share with us any events you attended, and projects you worked on, or just your thoughts on this special day.

For us at BWScrapbooking we decided to check out some of our LSSs (Local Scrapbook Shops). We have two in the immediate area. Scrapbook Cupboard which is located on Route 18 in E. Bridgewater, MA. When we visited, we found the store was busy, and the store was having a contest asking previous class attendees to bring in projects they had done. Also if you check out the website, you will find a freebie digital item for NSD

The second place we visited was The Crop Shop located at 333 Weymouth Street, Rockland, Mass 02370. Here they are having a special NSD crop for beginners and experts alike. If you miss the crop on Saturday there is a second on Sunday.

All in all we found that the stores were busy, and the staff was helpful. So whether you are a paper or digital scrapper you can definitely find help in the south eastern Massachusetts area.


Make Sure to Check out our Shop:

For those of you who can't get out to shops today, make sure to check out our shop, where we are having our Spring Sale. Here is what you will find:
50% off Digital Items
25% off Chipboard Albums
25% off Paper Packs
So whether you check out and crop at you local LSS or you buy online and scrap the night away we want to make sure you have a wonderful National Scrapbooking Day.

Thanks for your time

Jeff




Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin