Woah del.ico.us links!

I had so many links posted in the for me section of my del.ico.us account! How happy :) There is definitely a lot of information on scrapbooking out there, that is for sure. It has become such a popular hobby! I checked out the sites that were linked for me and found a lot of similarities and some unique differences. Here goes some thoughts:

Digital Scrapbook University is one site that I had come across before, but had not investigated too much into. They offer a bunch on online classes on learning different aspects of Photoshop and other design software, as well as design techniques. You do assignments and pass in homework, and so on. The classes vary in price range from $15 to $60. There is one class for free called Introduction to Digital Scrapbooking. I checked it out and found it to be a step by step guide for creating scrapbook pages on Photoshop or another photo imaging software. I am curious to know how many people enroll in those classes and do digital scrapbooks. I checked out the pages in the gallery and they were very good looking, I wonder how long it takes to put those pages together?! There is software that you can buy to create these pages and a bunch of tutorials so it seems like there are many options for those who want to do all their scrapping on a computer. Good ways to make scrapbooks, but my main goal is to create a community to share and view albums and stories with others.

Unforgettable Memories LTD. was neat because it had some unique community aspects added in. There were a lot of forums on everything from what was being sold on the site to ideas, quotes, techniques, and photography. Most impressive was that Frappr was used to show where community members were located and what kind of member they were (newbie, scrapper...). Some had a shout out looking for fellow scrapbooks, others just said who they were. I thought that was a cool way to get to meet some people (if there were more members of the community, closest to Maine was a New Yorker...).

One Scrappy Site is a pretty basic site with forums discussing ideas and other scrappy things. I did find two things really interesting though. First was that there was a virtual book tour that went on (earlier this year I think?) with a woman who writes about scrapbooking. She stops at different scrapbooking sites everyday and participates in chats, challenges, contests and so on. I had never heard of a book tour like that! What a neat way for someone to get a lot of publicity and to promote digital scrapbooking. The second thing I found to be cool was that there was one book someone wrote on scrapbooking yourself. Often, the person who does the scrapbooking is the one taking the pictures, and rarely has herself in the album. I want to dismiss that in my project by making the person the center of attention! These albums are about your life, and your legacy! That way people will know just what you are all about!

Virtual Scrapbooking is a list of sites that are all about scrapbooking. There are so many! How overwhelming! Just by looking at the summaries though, it seems like it is more of the same that I've been looking at: stores, ideas, and talking about scrapbooking.

Scrapbook Bytes is another digital scrapbooking community that has a store, forum, ideas, articles, and so on. I never realized that digital scrapbooking is so popular! That solves the problem of how to get scrapbooks onto the computer. Now I know that I want to create a community to share these scrapbooks. I am tired of just seeing nice pages in a gallery. What are the stories behind these lovely layouts???

Whew, what a community there is out there!!! Now my problem is to figure out how to bring them together. How can I interest more people in this new fad? Will I be able to create a community that will have not only women, but men creating legacy's of their lives as well? These are all questions that I am sure will be answered in time, as I continue to work on my capstone to create a new community for people everywhere who just want to have a creative piece of themselves shown for the world.