High Tea Meets Tech

I promised to tell the tale of a novice Digital Scrapbooker (me) and my adventures in this foreign, virtual landscape. I also promised to do it without jargon, and make it as much like High Tea in front of the computer as I possibly could. Apparently I was feeling pretty self-confident at the time (plus, Ronnie and Roo can be awfully persuasive)! Well, if you’re all settled in with your own cup of tea, I’ll take a deep breath and begin. Remember to extend that pinky finger! Here goes:

It’s all about the layers. Think layer cake, building up from the bottom to the top with all sorts of different fillings sandwiched in between. Think of a torte - oodles of super-thin layers with a different fruit or frosting between each circle of scrumptiously moist cake and the next. Only with this virtual torte, you can pile as many layers as your imagination will allow, without the torte ever toppling over. Now think of transparencies - the kind you use with an overhead projector (pre-PowerPoint) when you get roped into doing the presentation at work. Only instead of boring graphs and pie charts, you’re showing family photos, with captions and stories and maybe a pressed flower or two.

On each transparency, you place just one item, a photo of your grandmother on one perhaps, on another an old yellowing letter she wrote you. Onto a third transparency, you’ve typed up a few memories of when she taught you to sew on her ancient treadle sewing machine. On a fourth, you place a clip art image of an old fashioned Singer machine. On the fifth, a Title: “Stitching The Memories Together”. If you have a photo from when you were little and you spent time with your grandmother, add that as the sixth layer.

Now, place the transparencies, one by one, onto the lighted glass of the overhead projector. While looking at the big screen, slide the six different layers around until what you see projected takes your breath away; until it sends you reeling back to when you were five or six and your grandmother’s hand guided yours as you sat on her lap, while her foot pumped the treadle and you sewed your first apron. When it’s that perfect, you clip the layers together. Then, so you can still see it without the light behind it, you slip the seventh layer, a lovely piece of handmade paper underneath it all. Then you lock your layers together with a bit of magic digital glue.

That’s Digital Scrapbooking, where almost anything is possible!
Did you save me any scones? ;o)

The memories I just shared are true, but I lack all the tangible bits and pieces to make it come to life. Instead, I’ll share this digital layout with you. It features my grandmother first as a young child, then as a young mother with her own daughter - my mother Dorothy. It is set on a 12in x 12in “canvas” made up of 14 digital layers (4 papers, 2 photos, 4 separate lines of text, 3 embellishments, 1 brush). I hope this whets your appetite for digital scrapbooking!


P.S. If you like, you can put your cursor over a photo here in Blogger, click and have it open in a larger format.

Layout, photos and text by LMR/Pink Granite. Software: Apple iPhoto 5 & Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac. Papers: from the Natural Collection by Diane L. Miller, the Winter White Collection by Amanda Sok & the Fountain Pen Collection by Cheryl Barber. Alphas: “M” from the Persian Breeze Collection by Brandy Hackman & “Ancestor” from the Bookworm Collection by Erica Hite. Brushes: Sage Brush Set by Diane L. Miller. Embellishments: Pussy Willow from Blossoms & Blooms - Fall by Brandy Hackman. (All available at Scrap Girls.) Font: Papyrus.