This weekend, I’ll be attending the I_Blog Conference, a gathering of Midwest bloggers near Des Moines, Iowa.  I’m looking forward to it for several reasons:  1) It’s not as far from my home as a lot of conferences are; 2) There won’t be thousands of people there, so I’ll meet some new people in a manageable setting; and 3) There’s a great line-up of speakers on a variety of blogging topics.

While I don’t plan on writing blog posts while I’m there, I will be sharing updates on twitter, so if you’re curious as to what’s happening at I_Blog, you can follow me there.

Creative Memories is sponsoring me to attend the conference, and they will be hosting a digital scrapbooking workshop on Saturday evening.  I’m looking forward to this because they’ve recently upgraded their StoryBook Creator software and I haven’t had a chance to try the new features yet.

One of the things I like about the StoryBook Creator software is that you can start with the free version, and later, if you decide you want to use the additional features, pay for the full version and activate it easily by entering a code.  This is how I did my first SBC album; I began with the free version and did several pages before realizing I wanted some of the paid features, so I switched from StoryBook Creator (free version) to StoryBook Creator Plus (paid version) on the fly in the middle of my album.

For this weekend, I’m trying to decide exactly what I’m going to focus on during the Creative Memories work session.  Christmas is coming in a hurry, so I have some ideas in mind.

• Each year, my sisters-in-law and I each make a scrapbook page or two for a grandparents album.  It’s fun for my husband’s parents to watch the children grow, year by year, through these pages.  We started out several years ago with traditional scrapbook pages, but last year I used the Creative Memories software to make 12×12 page prints, which I then trimmed to fit the 9×12 album size we’ve been using.  I was done very quickly, and since all my photos are digital now, it saved me the effort of having them printed before putting the pages together.
• Creative Memories has a new product available: 12×18 calendars.  Through November 15, they’re 20% off if you purchase 2 or more, but even the regular price of $20.99 isn’t unreasonable.  The calendars in effect are a 12×12 scrapbook page with a 6×12 tear-off calendar at the bottom.  They can be created from scratch, by using the free calendar template download, or by importing an existing 12×12 page.  I wish that I could use the existing 12×12 templates that I already have, but it appears that that functionality isn’t yet available.  Still, it wouldn’t take long to choose from the various calendar templates and put together calendars for family members (or for myself).  At the end of the year, the photo parts of the calendar can be removed and placed in an album with slide-in pages.
• I enjoy making albums with the StoryBook Creator software.  I find it easy to use, with plenty of page designs available.  For the past two years, I’ve made albums of  my grandmother’s old pictures and writings.  The albums really brought her stories to life.  What is especially nice about making a digital album is that I can do the work once and then have as many copies printed as I wish, or even print pages on my home printer or share them electronically.  Albums can be made in several sizes, so that it’s possible to do anything from a brag book to a 12×12 large-format album.
• I haven’t put together our family’s Christmas card picture yet, and I can do that with the SBC software as well.  I can create a 4×6 or 5×7 album, design just one page in the album, then save that particular page as a .jpg and have it printed to include in our Christmas card.

Ah, the choices.  I need to look through my photos and see which project I should tackle first.

Below you’ll find some of the StoryBook Creator projects I’ve done in the past.  Wish me luck on my future endeavors!

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