My Digital Studio

I thought I would share a page from a scrapbook that I have been working on for about 12 years!!  Yes, you read that right....12!  I am finally finished thanks to how far our technology has come :)

This project has been an Heirloom album using pictures dating back over 92 years!  Many of the photos are damaged, of course.  Or names and dates have long since been forgotten.  So for a couple of years, I worked with my grandmother and great aunt and they had lively conversations trying to identify everyone and I would record the info on the back. 

And then we had the dilemma of how to copy the pictures so we could share them with ALL our family.

Well, then I had kids....so the box collected dust...for years and was that unfinished project taking up tons of space in my little house calling to me like the Tell-Tale heart...FINISH ME....FINISH ME....FINISH ME.

So last year, my husband and I dived in and just started scanning.  And scanning.  And scanning.  Luckily, given the pre-digital age, they didn't take quite as many pictures as I do.  But in the end we still scanned almost 400 pictures.

And finally, yesterday I was able to sit down and within a few hours drop them into MY DIGITAL STUDIO and....after 12 years I am DONE :)

It took me the longest to decide which pictures to use, but then I used pre-planned sketches to drag and drop the pics...MDS formatted each pic to the correct size for me automatically...and then I decorated the pages for the ENTIRE album in about an hour or so. 

It was crazy how fast and easy it really was, once I got started :) 

Anyways, I thought I would share one page with you.  My great-aunt was a flight stewardess and also featured in several of American Airlines promotional advertisements.  Isn't it fascinating the kind of family history you uncover when you pull out those dusty boxes?

When I scrapbook, I like all my pages to match and I thought this album was ALL about the pictures.  So I chose a very subtle going gray for all my images and background papers and changed the opacity of all images to 15% making them very faint, so your eye is drawn to the pictures and not the embellishments.  I kept it simple and light.

Now...after 12 years, I shipped this off to the printer (via a simple click of a button embedded into the program waiting for me) and in about 10 days I had a beautiful PhotoBook ready for my Grandma's 83rd birthday which was yesterday :)

And the greatest thing is...if any of my aunts and uncles want a different picture here or there....the book can be edited quickly and easily to customize for each of them...I am sooo excited!

What projects do you have calling to you to finish???

Happy Stampin'

Jami