Title: Boo to you too
Author: best grandma 2 u
Best grandma 2 u always has something new to share with us in her Scrapblogs. I love her aesthetic and eye for color. Her layouts are always impeccable and her photos are always crisp and fun. This Scrapblog is no exception. Halloween happened to be a birthday for some of her family members as well–how exciting!

Title: Girls in Red
Author: Lost Girl
Lost Girl’s simple, sophisticated style lets her photos speak for themselves. In this Scrapblog, her girls enjoy a crisp fall day and make friends with the squirrels in their neighborhood.

Title: Scrappin’ the Barn
Author: little_m
You can be sure that anything Karen touches turns to beauty, even if its a plain, uninteresting layout or a photo of everyday life. She brings to life the colors and the magic of the event or season she’s scrapping in her Scrapblogs. This is one of her older Scrapblogs, made none the less special because of its age, of her sister’s scenic barn and property in Wisconsin. Gorgeous!

Title: Amauri’s trip to Moody Gardens
Author: Robin Woodard
Robin shares a wonderful experience with us of a trip to Moody Gardens through the eyes of her little girl. It looks like they had such great fun, as the colorful photos and bright, interesting layouts show. What a nice warm blast of sunshine amidst these Fall Scrapblogs!

Title: In the Halloween Spirit
Author: b.c.noazarc
Anyone hungry? You will be when you look at this Scrapblog. These delicious looking cookies are enough to make even the pickiest of eater’s mouth water. The charming layouts really modify the photos well. Great work!

So guess what? Today is November 4th and we just finished Halloween, so now we can focus on getting ready for the holiday season! As creative people we know the importance of getting a head start on holidays. To feed your competitive spirits and get you in a creative frame of mind, we are announcing today our 2nd Annual Best Scrapblog Holiday Card Contest.

If you participated last year, you remember all the totally AMAZING scrapblog holiday cards that were created. Check out all the entries from last year here. With so many great stickers, backgrounds, themes and kits - we simply cannot wait to see what you come up with!

So here’s how you participate:
1. Create your Scrapblog Holiday Card. - The holiday you choose is totally up to you! Maybe your holiday is Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah or Thanksgiving?
2. Your card must be 3 Scrapblog pages - 1 for the front of the card, 1 for the inside top and 1 for the inside bottom.
3. Save and publish your scrapblog publicly. We need to see your creation!
4. Tag your entry HOLIDAYS09

Your entry must be created before midnight on November 13, 2009. The Scrapblog staff will vote on all the entries and choose the best THREE entries as winners. The winners will receive 25 copies of their Scrapblog Holiday Card!

Have Fun!!

Cheers!
Rebecca

I’m very excited to tell you about a new class you can take over at Big Picture Scrapbooking!

I find genealogy can be both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. There are so many times that I say something that reminds me of my late grandma or my mom will tell me a story from my childhood and I wish that I wrote all of those things down. Join Georgana Hall of Adornit as she walks you through a simple family history project using Scrapblog.

If you are not familiar with the Big Picture Scrapbooking format, Georgana will walk you through every step. This is a self paced class that won’t break the bank (it’s only $10!!) Plus you will get a free gift from Scrapblog too. I know you will love learning from Georgana; she has a sweet, patient nature and will encourage you along the way.

Everyday you create more memories, so now is your chance to learn something new, capture and share your heritage and learn more about Georgana and Adornit.

Have fun!

Rebecca

Title: Me and my pumpkin
Author: MusicLover!!!
Super cute Scrapblog about a very special surprise! I can only imagine the greatness that pumpkin will become when she carves it. It would be great to see photos of the before and after!

Title: brandons party
Author: akela
Even though this wasn’t intended as a Halloween Scrapblog, seeing all the great costumes in this very whimsical Scrapblog sure inspired me to get dressed up! It looks like a great time was had by all. Happy Birthday, Brandon!

Title: Ghosts of Halloweens Past
Author: Scrap17
I love the spooky and creative costume photos in this Scrapblog. With interesting layouts and great journaling, this Scrapblog definitely caught my attention this week.

Title: Twilight
Author: piglet c:
Being a closet Twilight fan (sshh, don’t tell anyone!) I cannot wait until the next movie comes out. Here is a very unique and eye-catching blog to tide all us Twilight fans over till’ then!

Title: halloween
Author: K&E
It looks like these girls had the best halloween ever! I love their creative costumes and makeup. It looks like they were having such a good time the grown-ups couldn’t help but join in, too!

Thanks to all of you that are trying out QuickMix! I have seen some really great Scrapblogs created with the new kits! We have also really enjoyed getting all your feedback, so keep it coming!

Today I want to show off one of my favorite of the new features: shapes and backgrounds. If you are a legacy user of Scrapblog, you are already aware of how to use shapes. When dragged onto the canvas, shapes can add visual interest to your scrapblog pages. They can be filled with color, gradients and prior to releasing the QuickMix, you could fill shapes with backgrounds that were “patterns.” I’m so excited about shapes today because, first of all, we’ve added 12 new ones. All the older shapes are still in the tray and they act just like the new ones - yay!

The best thing (in my opinion) about the shapes is that they can now accept ANY background. Your eyes are not deceiving you, I did say they can hold ANY background! No more searching for the square backgrounds in the builder. Simply see one you like, add it to your tray and drag it into the shape you want. As you can see in picture below, you can have as many shapes as you want on a page and they can each hold a different background. Think of it as a digital way to die cut the background papers.

Shapes have always been a very unique asset in Scrapblog. They can do so many things and change the look of your pages in pretty creative ways. We understand that sometimes you want to layer backgrounds and it’s not enough to have basic shapes like squares, circles and rectangles. So the new shapes are designed for you to really spice things up on your pages. I haven’t yet decided which one is my favorite. The rounded corner rectangle is very versatile, but I’m also extremely found of the heart, scallop edges and the tag shape. Be still my heart, I’m definitely in love with all the new shapes!

So what else is cool about them? If a background is not what you want, you can still fill them with color and add a gradient. You can add or remove a border and make it any color your heart desires. Add a shadow, change the angle and change the opacity are also creative things you can do to make the shapes perfect. If you decide you don’t like the background you added to the shape, just click the “remove pattern” button and the shape goes back to white.

You may have noticed in the photo above, a “hand” in the middle of the shape. This is a helping hand! When you click on the hand, it changes to fist show you know you’ve grabbed the background, now you can move the background around until you find the perfect selection for your page.

The last shape feature I want to show you is all about size. Shapes can be as big or as small as you want. To change the size of the shape, click on it, grab the blue square in the corner and drag it bigger or smaller. To retain the proportions of the shape hold down the SHIFT key when you are dragging.

Enjoy playing with the shapes, backgrounds and colors. We are so happy to continue to help you get your creative juices flowing!

By now, most of you have probably spent a few minutes checking out the new QuickMix feature available in the Scrapblog builder. Below is a video intro of the QuickMix in action.

In the next several blog posts, I will begin to point out to you some of the other new features you will see as you navigate inside the builder. Today we are going to talk about one of my favorite new features, the new pages component.

One thing we heard from you over and over was how hard it was to rearrange pages in Scrapblog. This complaint was something I definitely sympathized with because I tend to make 20+ page scrapblogs. Rearranging pages when there are a lot of them is very tedious and time consuming. Now that QuickMix can generate large scrapblogs with dozens of pages, this problem was going to get worse. Who wants to spend time rearranging, when you could be spending time creating?

The development team really thought a lot about how best to make adding, deleting and changing pages more awesome for you. Let’s check out all the cool new things you can do with the new pages system in the builder.

After you run through the QuickMix and your pages are complete, at the bottom of the canvas, you will see all the thumbnails of the pages created. Click the little gear on the thumbnail and each page will pop up a menu to delete, duplicate, add transition, and don’t publish page feature.

One of my favorite features is selecting multiple pages and moving them as a group to another part of your scrapblog. To select multiple pages, use the ctrl key (apple or command on the MAC) and click on the pages you want to move as part of your group. Once you have the pages selected, click and drag with your mouse (the pages will stack together) and drop them in the appropriate location in your scrapblog. It’s super easy!

Finally, I want to point out some familiar options that still exist. Adding blank pages, pages from a theme or from one of your other scrapblogs is still 1-click easy.

Playback options are just below the add a page option on the left-hand side of the bottom of the builder canvas.

Have fun QuickMix-ing your photos and rearranging pages. Next time we will discuss all the cool things you can do with backgrounds and the 12 new shapes we’ve added.

Cheers!
Rebecca

“Since inception, Carlos and the team have built a successful company by developing a compelling product that people are passionate about,” said Braff. “I am excited to be working with the Scrapblog team on its goal of making self-expression and multimedia storytelling an easy and fun way for everyone to share the joy and prized moments in their lives with others.”

Since joining Glu Mobile in 2003, Braff’s understanding of the digital entertainment marketplace and evolving consumer behavior has helped shape the way mobile games are marketed and launched today. In 2008, Braff was named by Digital Media Wire as one of the top 25 digital entertainment executives to watch and in 2007 she was honored as one of the 40 most influential people under 40 in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and in 2006 Braff was named one of the game industry’s 100 most influential women by Next Generation.

“As the founder, I could not be more proud of our selection to lead Scrapblog going forward,” said Garcia. “We have built a compelling product and we have learned a lot about selling virtual goods inside a creative platform. Now, Jill will take this offering to the next level. I look forward to working with her and supporting her strategy to maximize the potential of Scrapblog.”

Prior to joining Glu Mobile, Braff held senior marketing positions at Sega of America and Konami of America. In addition to her gaming experience, Braff also held management positions at consumer web service companies Photopoint Corporation and Ancestry.com. She also held positions at The Learning Company, Nintendo of America and Griffin Bacal. Braff has a B.A. from Colgate University.

“We are thrilled to see the appointment of somebody of Jill’s caliber appointed to the role of CEO at Scrapblog. The board has full confidence in Jill’s demonstrated leadership ability, and the value of her industry experience is clear,” said David Min, Principal of Steamboat Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of The Walt Disney Company and a member of Scrapblog’s board of directors.

QuickMix puts the craft of scrapbooking in reach of the millions of users who would love to put their digital photos into scrapbooks, but lack the time to spend hours on such craftwork. Instead, they have the flexibility to spend as much or as little time customizing a QuickMixed scrapbook as they would like, before sharing the results with family and friends. And unlike other services that attempt to save time by using stock templates, Scrapblog’s QuickMix creates unique layouts on the fly based on the photos and kit chosen by the user. QuickMix uses intelligent technology to arrange the photos and to design a one-of-a-kind scrapbook.

Click, Click, Create
QuickMix works in three easy steps: select a QuickMix scrapbook design kit, add photos, and get instant results. Users can select photos directly from their Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Smugmug, MySpace and Webshots accounts through one-click integration to these sites, or upload photos directly from their computer. Next, users choose from a wide variety of QuickMix scrapbook kits, including wedding, birthday, travel, seasonal, holiday, baby and just-for-fun styles. Once a design is chosen, QuickMix then instantly creates a unique, personalized digital scrapbook. Most users are done in minutes.

QuickMix users have full access to all the capabilities of the complete Scrapblog application as well. Through Scrapblog, users can tweak their scrapbook using the application’s online design tools, or add new elements including stickers, backgrounds, music, video, and more. When trying QuickMix for the first time, users will earn 150 free credits to use in the Scrapblog Marketplace where they can choose from recommended premium sticker packs and background packs specifically designed to match their QuickMix scrapbook kit.

“Digital cameras are becoming more pervasive because of their convenient size as well as the numerous high quality cameraphones that are in people’s pockets. We think QuickMix will appeal not only to our existing users but to whole new group of people who are looking to do more with the photos they are snapping,” said Jill Braff, CEO of Scrapblog. “QuickMix reflects the richness that Scrapblog has come to be known for and now gives users an express lane to scrapping that they can grow with if they choose.”

After a scrapbook is created using QuickMix, the user has the option for professional printing, or to immediately share it online through social network sites like Facebook or MySpace. Printing options like bound books, cards, and calendars make QuickMix a fun, effortless way to make a personalized gift, and the seasonal and holiday themes make it especially appropriate for the holidays.

Hello Fellow Scrapbloggers!

I want make you aware of a campaign we are running right now with Oral-B®. If you are a parent, you’ve no doubt gone through the ups and downs of your child’s tooth care. From the moment your little one smiles with that first tooth until the day they are smiling for senior photos, Oral-B® understands the unique stages your child’s oral health goes through. So Oral-B® has partnered with Scrapblog to help you preserve those special Smile-Stages with multimedia scrapbooks you can create and share online.

Create an Oral-B scrapblog today, and be entered for a chance to win a free printed version of your scrapblog!

Click here for all the details and have fun!!

I thought I could show you a high contrast black and white effect called threshold. Threshold is a photography technique you can easily create in Scrapblog using the advanced photo effects in the builder. If you like to have fun with editing photos and would like to try something new, I think you should give this a go.

Step 1) You open up the Scrapblog builder and choose a photo to edit. Select the photo and then click on the “Edit” button in the top right corner of the builder screen.

2) For the Threshold technique, you will first have to click on the “Comic” button under the “Basic” effects tab and then click on the “Advanced” tab at the top to finish the effect.

3) Under the “Advanced” tab you will see 5 sliders for which you can edit your photos even further. For the “Threshold” technique you will need to slide the “Brightness” slider to 30, the “Contrast” slider to 100, and the “Saturation” slider to -100.
(This technique will show up better on a well lit photo, not a dark photo)

4) Click “Done” and your photo editing is complete.

I hope you like this new techique I have shared.

-Jessica