A Blog on Steroids!

Susan Hobbs has completely redesigned her site – Heart2Heart Designs.   Susan said, “I’ve combined my website with my Blog. With so many sites/blogs out there I figured… what the heck! why not combine them. You’ve heard of hybrid scrapbooking. Well I guess you could call this hybrid blogging.”

One stop now does it all. Tutorials, articles, journal prompts, challenges, FREEBIES!, blog posts, and, yes, even her store! One of the changes is that it is now easier than ever to get some of her very nice freebies.

There is also a sale going on to kick-off the new format:
Buy $5 Get 5% off! 264326W1
Buy $10 Get 10% off! MQI455RU
Buy $15 Get 15% off! 538P2Y71
Buy $20 Get 20% off! 4727365W

The above coupon codes are only good through Wednesday (September 10th) so get shopping! 🙂

Digi Scrappers Corner

Digi Scrappers Corner is a new site that offers a store, a blog, a few freebies and a handful of tutorials for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. There is also a free newsletter available.

The site is bright and cheerful with good navigation. Because it is so new the product offering in the store is a little sparse, but they do offer some hybrid gifts through Cafe Press.

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.

Scrappin & Stampin with Savitri

Scrappin & Stampin with Savitri is an interesting blog whose creator, Savitri Wilder, has been using Photoshop since 1994! There are over 30 free video tutorials for Photoshop available here with topics such as:

• Text in Path
• Weathering and Antiquing
• Texture Overlay
• Grunge Overlay/Technique
• Creating Scallop Paper
• Stitching in Photoshop
• Vector Mask Tool
• Blending in Photoshop
• Flowing Your Text in Photoshop
• Alter Your Elements/Alphas
• Photoshop Extraction Using the Pen Tool
• Text in Shape

Scraps of Mind

Scraps of Mind is a Australian scrapbook blog that covers all types of scrapping – traditional, hybrid and digital. There are a lot of tips and tutorials available in the article section, and for freebies check out “Five Freebies on Friday.”

In addition you can sign up for the freed Weekly Word Art Newsletter and get three original pieces of Word Art, together with Scraps of Mind tips and news each week.

Vision Designs

Vision Designs is the website of artist Diane McFarland of Newfoundland Canada, where she shares her written digital scrapbooking tutorials for Paint Shop Pro.

The tutorials well organized, include screen shots as well as links to any digi supplies you might need in the creation process. Most are about creating frames, but there are a few on creating elements like ribbons.

Lots of artistic inspiration can be found here. One word of caution, if you prefer sites without music you will want to be sure you speakers are turned down before clicking on this site.

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.

Kimi Kreations

The blog of award winning photographer Kim Boustany is a great resource for creative tutorials for digital scrapbookers. In addition to her blog, she has also been sharing her creativity and tutorials at Photoshop Creative Elements since that site first opened, so be sure and check there for additional tutorials under “Kimi’s Kreative Homework”.

Scrolling through the examples of her artistry on her blog will certainly inspire you to try a tutorial or an artistic tip or two!

A before and after example of her work.