Digital scrapbooking has been my favorite method of memory keeping since winter of 2004. I adore piecing layouts together using pixeled papers. Plus who doesn’t love changing mistakes on a whim using an ‘undo’ button?

Today I’d like to share my process for digital scrapbooking and it begins with a template. Templates making digital scrapbooking easy. And fun. And carefree. They present the perfect canvas for pairing papers together and matching them with photos and elements without worrying if the design works. Follow along as I highlight important parts of my process.

First, I choose a template and open it in Adobe Photoshop or Elements. Before I make a single change, I save the file with a new name. Doing so prevents alterations of the original template file. In Adobe Photoshop Elements, go to File > Duplicate and rename the template. In Photoshop, Dupliate is located in the Image menu. Then click OK and close the original file. Now the template is ready for action.

The next step is to choose the digital kit. For my layout, I chose Basic Grey’s Sultry because it matched well with my photos.

I use Adobe Brigde to review kit contents quickly and compare papers and embellishments side by side. However, the papers are my main focus because they occupy the bulk of real estate on the template. I drag each into the workspace using the Move tool and play with varying combinations.