Free Digital Scrapbook Templates
Digital scrapbooking presents a unique way to capture special memories for posterity. Whether you are a computer veteran or a novice, you can create digital scrapbooks that go a step beyond conventional photo albums. You can add to the photos: small notes, embellishments, and stickers to tell the story more fully.
Free digital scrapbook templates can make the job easier for you. The scrapbooking paper, frames, titles – even embellishments or stickers are already placed for you. You don’t need to find or prepare each element. Just slip your photographs into place, add a journaling note or caption, and you have finished pages. Free digital scrapbook templates are, in a sense, scrapbooking kits.
Free digital scrapbook templates are a great way to learn digital scrapbooking. They are also a great way to see, before you invest money, whether you enjoy digital scrapbooking. Templates show you what you can do, and take the work out of it.
These free digital scrapbook templates are often provided as samples, with themes that appeal to a large number of people. The hope is that you will enjoy your experience and return to the website to purchase more materials.
Understanding Free Digital Scrapbook Templates
Free digital scrapbook templates are nearly-finished scrapbook pages. Some call them pre-made pages, or pre-made layouts. To use free digital scrapbook templates, you follow a few easy steps.
1. Download your free digital scrapbook templates. They should be in “png” format. Many will be zipped to reduce size. Unzip your downloads, and place them in a computer folder.
2. Open the software program you will use with your free digital scrapbook templates. Many programs you may already have will work well. Microsoft Word, PhotoShop, and similar programs are good. You may have purchased digital scrapbooking software.
3. Scan photos for your digital scrapbook pages.
4. Open the free digital scrapbook template you want to use. Open photo files, and place your photos on the page. Crop photos, if necessary to fit the opening. Send them to the back layer, and slide them into place.
5. If the colors of the papers in your free digital scrapbook templates do not complement your photos, simply use your
paintbrush” tool to change the colors.
6. Add a small box on your page, and type in a note about memories that go with the photos. This “journaling” might be as short as a caption, or a paragraph that will help viewers understand the photos.
7. When you are satisfied with your page, flatten all layers, and save it as a new file.
8. Now you are ready to print. Use acid-free paper so your colors will remain bright and true for years. Print it as a page of a larger scrapbook. Or print your page as a scrapbook card.
9. Optionally, you may want to save your pages to a CD – or send a finished page to a friend or family member. You might even want to send your completed free digital scrapbook templates to a “print-on-demand” company to have them bound into a permanent book.
Free Digital Scrapbook Templates Changes
As mentioned above, you may want to make changes to your free digital scrapbook templates. At first, those changes may be as slight as changing the color of the scrapbooking paper. As you learn more about digital scrapbooking, the changes may take in other elements.
You may want to add digital charms to empty spots – or place charms across corners or edges of your photos. If you have a photo of a child receiving a skateboard for Christmas, you might want to place a couple of skateboarding embellishments on a page. These extras add a personal touch to the themes of free digital scrapbook pages.
Helpful tip: Even if you are a veteran scrapbooker, you will find free digital scrapbook templates a help in getting fresh ideas. Start with downloads of free digital scrapbook templates, and customize them to your creative satisfaction.
Website Design – 2011 Website Design Trends
The fast technological and technical advancement produces fast changing trends in website design. 2011 is going to be nothing like 2010 and the past decade in general, according to experts. In the new year, functionality is going to take over looks and the design work is going to merge more effectively with development work. This is the main 2011 website design trend that determines all the rest.
What do you have to do the make a functional web site this year? As a start, you should make your pages compatible with portable multimedia devices with browsing capabilities. You should enable visitors to access your site through their mobile phones, portable media players and tablets.
You should reduce the amount of clicking visitors have to do. Similarly, you have to allow them to scan though your pages rather than to spend time trying to look for something that is not there. According to gurus, one of the trendiest ways to achieve all this is to make your web pages compatible with thumbnail browsing.
If you want to keep up with the 2011 website design trends, you should look for functionality in communication as well. It is a must for a functional web site to have a blog. However, just a couple of pages with articles are no longer sufficient. Linking to the social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter is a must. You should definitely use innovative features such as Twitter live feeds on your site as well.
The 2011 website design trends require you to have a deeper design with a number of layers creating a 3D view. Depth is easily accomplished by making some elements larger than others and by placing pictures and background with 3d images.
If you think 3D images may make your pages a bit too crowded, you may want to rely on another hot trend – using photos as background. The so called photographic backgrounds are stylish, elegant and attractive. They can send a powerful message, no matter whether they are used for personal, fashion or cooking sites.
The trendiest website colors in 2011 are the natural ones. Yellow, green and blue are by far the most popular. The idea is to use a combination of two or three colors with different undertones to create a harmonious and relaxing backdrop. Basically, you need to make the visitor feel at home.
Follow the 2011 website design trends to make your web site more functional and attractive in the new decade.
Website Templates – The Advantages
Website templates present a quick and simple way to set up your own website. If you are involved in internet marketing in any form, you will find it much easier with your own website. Sure, many people have been successful without them, or got by with the free sites offered by the particular program they are using, but nothing beats your own site.
Although the content of each of your web pages is relatively easy to find, or to write yourself, it is the look and feel of the site that gives your visitors their first impression of your site, and we all know what they say about first impressions.
Basically, website templates are ready-made website designs that you can load into your web space and immediately start filling with content. Templates give a regular look to your website, with each page based on the same design. This gives it a professional appearance, and your visitors will have more confidence in your ability to deliver.
Many templates are beautifully designed, and offer you or any other online entrepreneur the most convenient and quickest way to build your own website from scratch without having to pay for your own designer. Because they are almost always of the highest quality, you will be acquiring the professionalism that you need to give your business a boost without having to pay hefty web designer prices.
Templates are very easy to use. Every time you use a word processor you are using a template: your active page is a template – every page looks the same except for the content it contains. When it is claimed to be the easiest thing that you can use in creating your own website, it is a totally justifiable claim. A template is really very simple to use. If you have chosen the template that you want from those that are available, you can the easily set up the high quality website that will help to keep your business running smoothly and successfully.
Once you have a template of a website that suits your needs and preferences, all you have to do is replace all the content in them with that of your own, leaving the design just the way it is. If you have the know-how, you can even modify it a bit to make it completely unique and distinctive compared to the original template that you chose.
As you get more involved in internet marketing you will understand the importance of having a unique design with unique content, and there are many graphics programs around that can help you to alter your template graphics and text. Some of these are even free, being what is termed ‘open source’ software.
Because this design template assists you in setting up your website faster, another advantage that you can get out of it is being able to throw up a good website in very little time. Once your site is active you will be able to focus on the other things needed for your business, such as attracting traffic and finding the tools needed to make life easier for you.
Compared to designing your own website, making use of a design template is also more advantageous because it is handed to you clean and bug free. This way, you will be having a website that has been cleared of all the usual problems that people come across when they have designed their own website from scratch. The Internet marketing end of your business will be guaranteed to run smoothly if you use a template.
There is another advantage to using a website template for your web design. You will frequently be able to get regular updates to keep up with all the others on the web. Once you have found out what developments and updates are needed to keep your site fresh and modern, the template will make it simple to integrate the changes throughout your website without having to make changes to the layout.
Such templates certainly cut the cost of designing a website, since web design firms can be very costly, even for a relatively simple site. If you have ever tried designing one from scratch, then you will know that it is not an easy task, and can take a long time, especially when these bugs start popping up all over the place. A template avoids that, and renders what could be a complex and costly task into something easy and inexpensive, while allowing you to make changes to suit your own particular needs.
So, if you want to create your own website to market the services or the products that your business is offering, try the most hassle-free and convenient way to do it. There is no use in going at it the hard or the expensive way if you can have everything handed to you on a silver platter through the use of website templates.