I have been a traditional scrapbooker for over eleven years.  In the last few years I heard about digital scrapbooking and noticed digital layouts more and more in scrapbooking magazine.  I told myself I would never switch.  I loved the texture of paper and embellishments too much.  Around Christmas last year I was getting tired of the high cost of traditional product and the amount of space it took up so I asked for Memory Mixer 2 for Christmas.  It was an easy program to work with and I quickly switched over entirely to digital pages.  I have now been digital for nine months. 

In the spring I started using Photoshop as Memory Mixer did not have an erase button or the option to view double page spread, something I do a lot of.  Now I switch between the two programs.  Although I have created many pages, up until last month I had never printed an album, but I was really curious what it would look like.

At the beginning of summer a friend called me and asked if she could hire me to create an album for her mom as a thank you for a Disney Trip.  I had been thinking of starting my own scrap-4-hire business and thought this would give me a chance to test my skills out and see if I liked creating for hire, so I immediately said yes.  To my delight I really enjoyed the process of customizing and album for someone else, and delighted in the joy of having her see it for the first time and ohh and ahh over it!  The best part was that the album was digital so not only did she send a copy to her mom, she printed one out for herself.  That is one of the things I love most about digital albums.  Her favourite page is included in the photos above (“Animal Kingdom” – orange, brown & green page).  I also included one of my favourite pages (yellow with flourishes). 

I created the album in a 12 x 12 format but decided to print it at 10 x 10 through viovio.com.  I used the viovio.com guides (free download on their website) as I created the album, keeping everything inside the orange lines.  The album printed beautifully.  The pages are vivid and the photos look great.   I really like the 10 x 10 size because it is easy to handle.  I was worried that the photos would be too small to see because I had fit so many on a page, but the size was perfect, and all the details in the photos were easy to see.  It looks fantastic.  I will definitely print with viovio.com again.

My friend wanted a burgundy cover, being 10 x 10 Viovio does not customize, and I realized my title page would be printed as the sticker on the front.  The title page was created with bright colors and I knew it would clash with burgundy.  I ended up creating a small black square with a border and put “Disney World 2008” and uploaded it to the appropriate place so it would take the place of the title page sticker.  Unfortunately, even thought I had the image centred on the computer screen when I submitted the album, it ended up being printed slightly off centre on the sticker.  Also, when adding the box to the sticker image, I compensated for trimming but there wasn’t any so it looked a bit funny.  In the future I will not put a box around my title.  If it is off centre it won’t look as bad and I don’t have to worry about placing my box or images in the right spot.   Uploading and creating my book was easy.  It took awhile to figure out how to change what prints on the front sticker but once I figured it out it was as simple as uploading my new image and choosing it.

Viovio.com prints their logo in two spots on the album.  One was on the last page on the back (see photo above) and the other is on the back of the actual book on the material they bind the book with.  Neither was invasive nor bothered me.  You can pay extra to get them taken off.

My friend was thrilled with her album and I enjoyed creating it for her.  I enjoyed it so much I have started up my own scrap-4-hire business!  I am looking forward to creating many more albums. 

Barb Plett



Credits:
various kits from Laura Ping and Melissa Bennett

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