amazed by technology

I have to confess that I’ve been spending way too much time on my computer lately. The reason? I recently discovered digital scrapbooking and free “digiscrap” kits that can be downloaded. For a while, I was checking almost daily to see how many free downloads I could get. I found the best ones at Digital Freebies and Shabby Princess. Then I use the pre-made elements in Photoshop to create layouts in a jiff. I could create the elements myself, but why? With 3 kids ages 5 and under, I have an abundance of digital photos and a serious lack of time (not to mention sleep). This whole new industry has amazed me. We have come so far with technology advancing at an exponentially fast speed.

By trade, I am a graphic designer. I’ve been designing on a computer since 1992. I started on a 286 PC creating my own clip art for Print Shop. I didn’t have a mouse, I just used the arrows on my keyboard and the enter key to turn pixels on or off (see above). From an artistic standpoint it was crude, but so cool that I could make something digital that could be printed over and over again, even if it was with a dot matrix printer. Then I got a mouse and a new 486 PC. Wow! I was amazed by Windows. I think I spent hours changing the color scheme for the desktop. In college I learned how to use a Mac. In a typography class we worked on those tiny 4” screens that make you feel like you’re looking out of a submarine. For my first job in the real world, I worked at a magazine publisher. We still did paste-up with x-acto knives and a wax machine, but we designed on Macs and used the new super duper Syquest 44MB cartridges to back up our work. Then the Iomega 100MB zip disks came out and we used those to transfer clients’ files back and forth. In time, we were burning the whole magazine onto a CD (which took about 2 hours) to send to the printer. Now, you can just export them as PDFs and email/upload files to a printer. I can also download an 80MB digiscrap kit in about 30 seconds. It takes longer to warm up a frozen burrito! All this change in just a span of about 15 years. Amazing!

That said, I hope I can jump on board and become a digiscrap designer someday too. I have the Photoshop and Illustrator skills, now I just need the time! LORD, please multiply my time so I can create things that are pleasing to You, according to Your perfect timing and will. In Jesus name, Amen.

Here are some things I've made using my free digital scrapbooking elements...