Arlington Scrapbook Show

I've blogged about Red River Paper before but I thought I'd talk about them again because I just saw their booth at the Scrapbook Show at the Arlington Convention Center. Drew Hendrix had contacted me about printing some of my pages on his paper to display in the Red River booth at the show and of course I'm always up for seeing my work displayed so I sent him some files and I went out to the show this afternoon and...WOW! It was so cool to see my scrapbook pages printed on his fantastic paper. The Red River Ultra Pro Satin and Premium Matte paper made my pages look fabulous. If you print any of your own photos on an inkjet printer at home you should check out Red River paper the quality is fantastic and the price is amazing.

They also sell paper to make your own greeting cards, it is precut for popular card sizes and is pre-scored so that when you fold it, the fold is perfectly straight and in the exact middle of the card. It costs less than $1 in paper, ink and envelope to make your own customized greeting cards. That's pretty amazing. I came home and I was looking for some cards I had created to print on the card paper and I found my Christmas card from last year. I thought I would share it with you. I really love it. Here's what I did to make the card. First I went to Michael's looking for an ornament to hang on my tree to put a picture into and photograph but

 that's now what I ended up doing. I bought the 2008 frame ornament but it was square and did not fit the picture I wanted to use on my card. That's not going to stop me! I scanned the frame on my flatbed scanner, cut it in half and added a few inches to the sides to make it a rectangle. Then I had to place my photo in the frame and add some text and a little sparkle on the 2008. I think it turned out well. I like making cards they are like mini scrapbook pages.

Speaking of scrapbook pages, after I made the card I wanted to use the frame again so I created the first page of my 2008 scrapbook with it. The pages are like little puzzles and I have so much fun figuring out where to put all my photos and embellishments sometimes I move things

 around quite a bit before I come up with the finished page. That's one of the reason's I like digital scrapbooking. I can change it as many times as I want and nothing gets torn or messed up. In traditional scrapbooking once you glue it down or cut your photo or your paper...it's done there's no going back. In digital I can undo as much as I like.

Then other thing I like about digital scrapbooking is the cost. If I use Drew's Red River Paper to print my pages it costs me about $1.50. The page about cost me a grand total of $1.50. Yes I did buy a bow for $.99 and the frame for $3.99 but those weren't really bought for the page they were bought for the card :) Even if I say I bought them for the page my total cost is $7.50 and I have an ornament to hang on my Christmas tree next year.

If I were to create this page the traditional scrapbook way I would have to start with a piece of white card stock which would run me about $1, then I would need shiny red card stock to create my frame: another $1 or so, a piece of red satin ribbon about a buck, a package of rhinestones to make the 2008 would probably run me about $5, and a piece of silver paper to put behind the 2008 and red frame to make it look like the real frame is another buck. You are up to $8 already and you haven't printed your photos yet. This page was a 12x12 so the big picture would have to be printed on 8x10 paper and the smaller photo on 4x6 paper. If you print them at a store you are looking at about $10 or so. Then you need the fancy archival pen to write the words, oops, two of them because most of the words are grey but a few are red, and you will need the glue or other adhesive to attach all the parts my guess would be about $10 more. So...grand total $28. It's quite a difference. As much as I scrapbook, digital make cents (pun intended) for me!