It took me all of five minutes to create a one-page Scrapblog as tribute to my companion bird. You can do a whole lot more.
By Maria de los Angeles Lemus
Scrapblog is a dreamy, easy to use digital scrapbooking website available to anyone who wants to do more than just share photos. Why dreamy? Because it’s fun, free and simple -- this is the kind of thing we like!
You can start an online scrapbook quickly with several pre-set themes or a blank page -- either way, there's oodles of room for creativity. Scrapblog Builder offers basic graphical menus that let you add backgrounds, photos, shapes, text boxes, music, videos and more, while using your mouse to play with layout. When I tested Scrapblog, I felt like a kid with a brand new box of crayons! (And yes, I actually own a box of crayons.)
Folks with absolutely no background in graphic applications may need to tool around Scrapblog Builder to get the hang of it, but I wish all computer stuff was this user-friendly. The grab bag of design and publishing options isn't like a cluttered purse; instead, what I need is easy to find. I can spend more time doing instead of figuring out how to do it and I needn't know squat about how the developers work their magic.
Scrapblog fine-tuned its website with user feedback for two years before officially launching this past April. To date, Scrapblog enjoys tens of thousands of users -- or perhaps it’s the other way around -- so many users enjoy Scrapblog.
Alex de Carvahlo, aka “Community Guy” at Scrapblog, spoke to me last week about the website's original inspiration: “Carlos Garcia, the company founder, was at a web 2.0 conference and realized people could do more than just share photos. They could create a story with photos.”
Scrapblog adds dimensionality to photo-sharing. For example, I
could just email my family and friends a link to a Flickr set, but
Scrapblog makes it warm and fuzzy -- think of it as Flickr with
fresh-baked cookies and more killer multimedia possibilities.
Some Scrapblog users are also actively involved in traditional scrapbooking. “They create hybrids by printing Scrapblog pages to use in actual scrapbooks,” Alex explains.
Scrapblog has some cool tools for you to easily and beautifully tell any story your heart desires. Back in Skinny Jeans readers could use Scrapblog to document a weight-loss journey or share a process of self-discovery -- it's all up to you.
Kudos to Carlos, Alex, lead developer Omar Ramos and the rest of the Scrapblog crew for implementing a seamless, simple program. Click here to explore the latest or most popular public Scrapblogs.
Have you ever done any digital scrapbooking? I'd love to hear about your experience.
