Digital Craft Cottage – Revisited

I first reviewed Digital Craft Cottage shortly after it opened in December of 2007. Since then it has grown up a lot. If you’ve never visited “The Cottage” before it is a hybrid scrapping site that goes beyond just scrap booking to embrace all hybrid crafts such as cards, tags, boxes, albums, brag books etc.

They have games, challenges and contests with prizes and monthly exchanges. Those that participate in the exchanges, will receive the huge mega monthly kit FREE. Make Quick pages, Brag Book pages and exchange them with the members. They also have a recipe exchange monthly, where you can get a lot of great recipes ready to print and use as gifts for yourself, family and friends.

The “Gift a Day” program allows you to log in each day and download a part of the kit, by the end of each month, you will have a whole and very unique scrapbooking kit.

And if you’ve ever thought of designing scrapbook kits yourself, The Cottage has a wonderful Designer Program that will let you create and sell your items in their Shoppe.

The forum members are friendly and willing to help or offer suggestions and there are a great variety of free tutorials for Photshop and Elements including tutorials on how to create your own papers and embellishments.

Scrap Outside the Box!

Scrap Outside the Box! offers a small store, gallery, blog, a moderately active forum and a handful of freebies. However what really sets this site apart is the tutorials offered. There are over 30 digital scrapbooking tutorials for a variety of programs including Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and FotoFusion.

New YouTube Group for Digital Scrapbookers!

Hummie, of Hummie’s World, has just set up a new YouTube group for digital scrapbookers to share video tutorials. Membership is free, and you don’t have to contribute a video in order to join the fun and learning. Of course if you do have a video tutorial to share all the better!

Currently there are 18 video tutorials from a variety of authors that cover topics such as creating curled corners, blending and creating backgrounds, creating word art, threading ribbons etc.

Digiscrapping.net

Digiscrapping.net is the website of digiscrap designer Heather Manning. Currently in her store she has “lowered prices on almost all of my personal use products over $1.00! Plus, new items have moved into the It’s A Buck category! PLUS now until March 24 everything over $1.00 (Personal and Commercial use!) is on sale for 50% off! That’s off the lower prices, not the old prices!”

This site also houses her personal blog and a selection of Digiscrap Tutorials for Paint Shop Pro users. Topics covered include: Blending in PSP, Changing Colors in PSP, Extracting in PSP, Hang Anything in PSP, Make a Brush in PSP, Selective Coloring in PSP, Use a Frame in PSP, Use a Mask in PSP, Using an Overlay in PSP and Use a Quick Page in PSP. These written tutorials include screen shots and are clear and easy to follow.

ETA:  The sale has just been extended until the 28th!   

Two Peas in a Bucket

Two Peas in a Bucket was founded in 1999 by Jeffrey White and Kristina Nicolai-White. It is a full -feature digital scrapbook destination complete with a gallery, store, forum and tutorials.

The Education & Library section contain “Pea Soup” which is a well organized collection of Poems, Titles, Quotes etc…. There are also articles, tips and tricks and tutorials available in this section.

If you are interested in improving your digital photography skills then be sure and check out the free “Photography 101: 12 weeks to better photos” class. Course materials are in the form of articles and and printable PDF’s.

Course Outline
Week 1: Aperture Basic Training
Week 2: Advanced Aperture
Week 3: Light
Week 4: Flash
Week 5: Composition & Framing
Week 6: Shooting Indoors
Week 7: Shooting Outdoors
Week 8: On the Go
Week 9: Portraits
Week 10: Landscapes
Week 11: Your Daily Environment
Week 12: Lenses, Filters & Accessories

Shabby Princess/Shabby Shoppe

At Shabby Princess they have been sharing FREE digital scrapbooking kits for over three years! They do it because they feel it is “a WONDERFUL opportunity to let everyone give digital scrapbooking a try before investing too much money!” These are full-size kits full of beautiful papers and great embellishments.

The Shabby Shoppe!, which is the twin of Shabby Princess, is a digital scrapbooking site featuring high quality, downloadable products for both digi and paper scrappers! Lots of great quick album sets (piece-of-cake) that would make putting together an album a snap. Between that and Vivoio you could have a printed album in your hands (or sent as a gift) in no time flat! They also have some very unique embellishments in the store as well.

The site also offers a number of digital scrapping tutorials for both Photoshop and Elements users. Many of the tutorials are available as screen casts. In addition to the tutorials, the sisters sites also share a blog and a newsletter.

Digitals

The tag line for Digitals is “where artistry and quality unite!” The site offers a store, forum, gallery, free samples, classes and tutorials.

Free tutorials are available for the following software:

• Photoshop Tutorials ( 23 items )
• PSE Tutorials ( 4 items )
• PSP Tutorials ( 30 items )
• DIP Tutorials ( 2 items )
• Beginner Tutorials ( 18 items )
• Tips ( 3 items )

The majority of the tutorials are presented in PDF format and include screen shots. Examples of topics covered include Digital Paper Tearing in Photoshop, Making text on a path in Photoshop and PSP, Making beads in PSP and Making button in PSP.

Digi Scrapin’ with Jen!

Jen Strange is one busy lady! In addition to her “Digi Scrapin’ with Jen” blog, she also has a website, JenStrange.com and is involved with the Stop Ditigal Piracy blog.

The Stop Digital Piracy blog is more of a spot for static content than a regularly updated blog. According to Jen it was designed “to be a resource for digital scrappers who need to understand what piracy is and how to avoid taking part in it” and “to be a resource for digital designers who need help fighting piracy.”

The Digi Scrapin’ with Jen! blog and its sister website, are great resources for both begining and advanced scrappers. Among the resources you will find on these sites are: Photoshop tutorials, many of which will work in Elments too. Paper scrapping tutorials, an alphabetical lists of all the digiscrap stores, blogging and computer tips, etc. Both site are well organized and welcoming.