Here's a little story how Digital Scrapbooking has been part of my life. I've been doing some layouting for the last 12 years of my life. I've done newsletters, books, magazines, souvenir programs, brochures, leaflets, etc. After I resigned from my full-time job and learned photoshop, I started making collage/montage of our pictures. My husband has always been out of the country and he has gone to more than 13 countries in Europe, Asia, Middle East and USA. He has lots of digital pictures and I just thought that if we will print them all, it will be too expensive so I thought of putting 10 or more picture in an 8x10 canvas. That way, we will save a lot on printing. Soon, I began making a collage of all the pictures that we have. I used no element or anything in my layouts, they were all photo collage. Here's a sample of my old layout with my sister's wedding photos, LOL--What Jurassic LO!:
Then, one day I saw a very beautiful layout that has lots of "cliparts". So, I thought I should also put some cliparts in my LO. Then, I overheard that they were downloaded from the internet. So, I searched the web and I found out that there's this thing called "Digital Scrapbooking".
One of the blogs that I visited was Lonetta Avelar's Creative Victorian Designs. I love her work and one of her freebies during that time was Refined Legacy. I wanted to have the complete set since I'm starting to make our heritage bragbook. However, some of the most beautiful parts are "add-ons". One can only get an add-on by submitting a layout or a QP using the kit where the "add-on" belongs. I was hesitant to submit a layout since I am a Filipino and, I'm sorry to say this, I'm afraid Netta would not give me the add-ons if she would see that I'm not "white". Oh! well that's another story...my father spent 13 years in the US during the early 60s to early 70s and I guess during that time racial discrimination was still eminent. He often say when he was still alive that some American would treat their pets better than brown-skin people. Well, that was half a century ago and we're now in the new millenium. I know a lot of things had changed since my Dad's time but I don't know why I'm still uncomfortable to submit an LO. So, I was forced to make a QP and that was my first QP. I received the add-on right away and Netta commented that she loved the QP. I didn't mind it at first since I thought she's just being nice. Then, another kit came so I have to make another QP to get the add-on...and so on.
One time, she posted a "news" in her blog asking for volunteers to extract objects from pictures. I volunteered but she declined to get me as part of her extraction team, rather she asked me to join her Creative Team for "Victorian Quickpage Parlor" blog. She said she really love the QPs that I made. I was so overwhelmed. That was late November 2007. I didn't know how to upload files at 4shared, so she taught me everything. Then, she encouraged me to have a blog, she again taught me what to do. Then, early this year, she began selling her kits at scrap-n-tag and again ask me to join her team. Soon, I began downloading items at ephemeral victorian (her other blog for freebie designers) and tried my first kit last February. I also started joining challenges and displaying my LO at DSO. Things are happening very fast for me.
If there is one person that I consider as my mentor in Digiscrapbooking, Netta Avelar is the one. We've never met each other personally yet she's the one who opened the door of oppurtunity for me. We're many miles away from each other yet she never fails to guide and encourage me to venture in different things with regards to digital scrapbooking. I was just a girl wanting to get some add-ons and Netta opened my eyes that I could do more. She believed in me...she showered me with some fairy dust and soon I began to have wings and fly.
Oh! well, it's been a while since I last posted at VQPP. Anyway here are some QPs that I made a long, long time ago. LOL. Actually, the Refined Legacy QP is the first one that I made using Creative Victorian Design--in fact, this was the first ever QP that I made. And look what I've done with it:
These are some of the QPs that I made before to get Netta's add-ons. The Refined Legacy QP includes two QPs in one download, the other one is a variation which has no "grandma, mom & me" wordarts, so you can freely put whatever you want to put there.
Download here
Download here
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