Awash in Paper No More

Last weekend I met my daughter, Laura at a local motel for a Fall Scrapbooking Retreat. We joined a group of diehard scrapbookers on Friday afternoon and scrapped our little hearts out until Sunday afternoon. I love these retreats because I get to see so many of my friends AND I can get so much done. We have a room reserved just for our scrapbooking where we can leave our supplies and projects out 24 hours a day and come and go as we please to work on them as we will. Some folks stay up scrapping into the wee hours of the morning. (I made it to 2 a.m. the first night.) Others are much more sensible and rise and retire according to a more normal schedule.

I tried a new experiment at this retreat. Instead of lugging all my supplies over to the motel, I decided to spend the weekend doing digital scrapbooking on my laptop computer. Consequently, I really only needed to bring my laptop, some extension cords, my small external hard drive, and my wireless mouse. My daughter scrapbooked the more traditional way, bringing her albums, paper, adhesive, trimmers, etc. Oh, that's my almost 60-year-old bear, Elizabeth supervising things (or trying to).

So compare the work area shown in the photo at the right with the photo on the left, which is my work space. It was just me, my computer, an idea book or two, and occasionally, Elizabeth.

I'm telling you, it was great. I'd work on my digital albums and pictures and, when I'd get tired, I'd read my email or surf the Net. If I needed to refresh my memory on some place I'd toured for a bit of journaling, I'd go up on the Net and Google the attraction to doublecheck things like "what year was Edgewood Plantation built?"

Occasionally I'd get up to stretch my legs and wander around to see what others were working on or I'd go grab another cookie from the snack table to keep my energy levels up. Elizabeth contented herself with checking out the new products on the display tables. I'm amazed at the options that we now have with Creative Memories for either the traditional scrapbooking or downloading the same paper designs or embellishments for digital scrapbooking. The digital versions sure solve the storage problems in my craft room, making more space for all my yarn.

By the end of the weekend, I was amazed that I had spent so many hours on the computer and accomplished so much without feeling at all wiped out. Even better, it only took me about 5 minutes to pack up everything. Whee! Now the test will be to compare costs over the next few months to see if digital costs are comparable to traditional and also to see if I'm staying more up-to-date on my scrapbooking by going digital.