Title: Holiday Hijinx
Author: Tammy-N-Q8
It just goes to show you that anyone can learn “new tricks’, and Tammy is no exception. I found this Scrapblog’s story very interesting. See, Tammy lives in Kuwait, and (according to her profile) she has never done any digital scrapbooking before. That does not mean, however, that she is any less great at it! This scrapblog has great photos, and I love the layouts. So great job, Tammy, and keep up the awesomeness!

Title: science centre
Author: alannarusnak
Sometimes the more simple the Scrapblog, the better it is. Alanna has a designer’s eye, and she proves it in this Scrapblog. Her simple layouts convey elegance, and sometimes with just the use of interesting backgrounds, she brings such life to her pages.

Title: ASPECTS OF AUTUMN
Author: cazjane
In this Scrapblog, the photos truly speak for themselves. I love the gorgeous pictures of autumn, they almost make me feel as if I’m part of her Scrapblog. Great work!

Title: First snowman
Author: Ninamor
As a kid who grew up in heat with no snow anywhere remotely in site, I can really appreciate snow and getting to play in it. Ninamor’s kids did such a great job with their first snow man (as I hear, first snow is usually kinda slushy and hard to work with, so that was probably a feat in itself!) and you can tell they really had fun in the snow! Of course, knowing me, now I’d probably be complaining about how cold I was. I guess that’s why kids are kids!

Title: A Ilha
Author: Paulistapink
This is an older Scrapblog, but it amazes me that even with the limited elements we had avialiable back then, that Paulistapink created this beautiful Scrapblog. Her story about the sunken island of sentiments is whimsical, and the photos and layouts are simple and gorgeous.

It’s the day you’ve all been waiting for; the day we announce the winners of our 2nd Annual Holiday Card Contest. Let’s begin by saying “WOW!” you are all very talented designers.

I must say that we had so many wonderful entries, it was practically impossible to choose the winners. However, after much deliberation, we’ve decided on the following three stand-out card designs.

Congratulations to our winners - you totally deserve all the kudos!

Even though our contest is over, it’s definitely not too late to create and order your holiday cards. When placing your order, remember to allow 3 business days for processing. For example, if you placed your order today, it would likely ship on Friday or possibly even Monday.

Now for the winners!

Title: Christmas Card
Author: sarahkirksey
Sarah’s card is not only well designed, but the photos and typography give the card a luxury feel. The beauty of the card jumps at you immediately. Well done!

Title: White Christmas
Author: Lost Girl
Lost Girl has a knack for detail and creativity. As last year’s winner, she had big expectations for us here at Scrapblog HQ. But we couldn’t resist this well crafted snow-globe themed card. I actually had to look at in the builder to appreciate all the fine details. Truly an amazing card.

Title: Holiday Family Card
Author: CRZY4SCRAPPN
Our final selection was created by the talented CRZY4SCRAPPN. She actually submitted two entries that we loved. Both are creative and well designed, but this one was just a bit more fabulous!

Congratulations to all of our winners, you totally deserve it. Thank you to everyone that participated! As I said, it was a really difficult decision. Have a great holiday season and we look forward to seeing more of your creations!

Love seems to always be in the air here at Scrapblog. Scrapbloggers search the word “love” more than anything else on our site. Also, a week never goes by that we don’t see a scrapblog printed about wedding love, baby love or pet love. So, Challenge 22 was a big hit here in the land of love.

As usual, we all had a difficult time choosing a winner. Each entry was special and unique in it’s own way. Each entry could have been declared the winner. It’s true that love can inspire art, creativity and emotion as you will see from our two runner’s up and our winner. Please take the time to review all the entries, they will make you fall in love!

2nd Runner Up
Title: 2008
Author: trilogymom
What an unbelievably amazing year! Follow world travelers Kate and Kevin as the visit many wonderful cities, see lots of exciting shows and fall in love along the way. Beautiful photos and wonderful pages.

1st Runner Up
Title: Long Lost 1953 Wedding
Author: Chilypepah
Love and family go hand in hand and we found Chilypepah’s pages delightful! Chilypepah does a wonderful job telling the story and giving us insight into her family. Fabulous work!

The Winner!
Title: Love Story
Author: emeralda
Our winning scrapblog is a classic love story. Emeralda, unfortunately, I think many of us can relate to your tale. Boy meets girl, puppy love and then someone’s heart is broken. We loved the details and your photos. Great job telling your story - CONGRATS We LOVE it!!

Title: Sisters & Twins
Author: twpt
These sisters look like they have a lot of fun together! I love all of the great photos of them (they do look an awful lot alike!) and the creative layouts in this Scrapblog.

Title: Twins 1
Author: KirknCourt
I love how KirknCourt document their babies’ progression even before they’ve been born! I can’t wait to see photos of the new baby girl and boy and what kinds of Scrapblogs will be made of them. Stay tuned!

Title: Twins in matching dresses
Author: Purvail–Elaine
I’m guessing that these sisters are not identical twins, but you sure can tell that they’re related, even without the matching dresses. I’m a sucker for old photographs, especially black and whites, and these photos have tons of character! I love their matching dresses (even though they may not have!) and the super cute school pics.

Title: the twins first birthday
Author: ummehunein
This looks like it was a really fun birthday party for these two little girls! With yummy food, cakes, and surrounded by their family, its hard not to share their joy in being loved and celebrated.

Title: Ladies in Red
Author: valerie.revier‘
Their adorable matching outfits and cute pouty faces make these twins an irresistible duo. I love the interesting layouts and vivid photos in this Scrapblog.

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