So it may sound like a no-brainer, plug in a color printer, buy some paper and away you go, but when you’re talking about digi scrapping, it’s not quite that simple. For one thing, there are a variety of page sizes involved in digi scrapping, just as there are in traditional scrapping. I prefer 8×8 while one daughter prefers 12×12 and the other prefers traditional 8 1/2×11, so setting up a personal printer can be challenging for those of us who are techno-challenged. For me personally, the cost of the ink is too much for me to pay. I’m no more willing to spend that amount on printing ink than I am on the traditional scrapbook papers and embellishments. My solution? I’m so happy you asked!!

When I save my digi pages, I save them as a PDF file in the highest resolution available…currently thats 300…don’t ask me what 300 means, I have no idea other than it means really pretty pictures when I’m done!

Once I have my pages saved as a PDF file, I set up an account at my local Kinkos/FedEx store. The account is free, so don’t worry about any hidden costs.

So now I have an account at the local printers and my PDF pages on my computer. I can transmit my PDF pages to Kinkos and they print them for me…ah, but at what cost, you ask…are you ready for this? Typically, it’s about $.15 a page…no, that’s not a typo, that’s what it costs. I built a full 8×8 photo album filled with scrapbooked pages for under $20. Now those of you who are familiar with traditional scrapping know that you can’t create a single page for that amount, let alone fill the entire book.

You can jack that price up by using the most expensive paper, but when I decided to try this, I took one PDF file saved on a CD to the store and had them print one copy of the same page on every type of paper they had…I ended up with seven pages. I could tell which paper was which when they were in my hands, but when I put them into the protective pages of the photo album, they were identical. Now I was worried that maybe my tightwad nature was causing me to believe that, so I took the book to several people and asked them to tell me what differenced they saw. No one could tell me what was traditional paper, what was photo paper, what was the most expensive paper…there is literally no visible difference. So I go with the cheapest paper possible. It’s all acid free paper, and it’s protected in the photo album so it works fine for me. Plus, I still have the original PDF file if for some reason it becomes damaged…I can just have a new one printed, no problem.

Now the down side…the down side is that sending the pages to Kinkos online is a time consuming process. I’ve since decided it’s much faster for me personally to save the PDF pages to a CD and take that into Kinkos to have them printed. The results are the same, I just don’t spend as much time sitting in front of the computer while each PDF file is uploaded to Kinkos.

There you have it, a simple and inexpensive way to print your scrapbooking pages so you can use them in a photo album.

My sister-in-law recently looked at one of my photo albums and while she liked it, she did mention that she missed the extra embellishments like stickers and charms that make a traditional scrapbooked page 3-D…so while I personally don’t miss them, it would be a simple matter to make your digi scrapped pages slightly less full and then add the stickers and embellishments to make them 3-D…you’ll still save a fortune from the traditional paper scrapping and it also allows you to change up the page each time you print it.

Ok, time to flip the wash and get some house work done…have fun!

God Bless,
Angela Roe