Letter From Team Digital - Margie Lundy

In the past 5 years, DSP has experienced a tremendous amount of growth, becoming the largest digital scrapbooking website and home to more than 142,000 members!  With growth comes change and we’ll be announcing a lot of exciting NEW things over the next few months!

It’s a DSP evolution, a scrapping revolution, and our New Year’s resolution:  It’s a SCRAPOLUTION! 

And it’s all about YOU making scrapping goals and Team Digital supporting, encouraging, and cheering you on every step of the way.  More on your part after some announcements! 

Here is just a quick summary of some great NEW things for the NEW Year!  Click here to read the entire announcement!
NEW SHORTCUT!  Tired of typing www.digitalscrapbookplace.com?  Use www.dsp.me! 

NEW SIZE!  You asked and we listened!  We recognize that some of our customers are printing in larger formats and with professional book printers that require 300 ppi images, so we are pleased to announce as of January 1, many DSP products will be available at 300ppi AND 200ppi!  Read more! 

NEW SENIOR DESIGNER! Congratulations to Erica Belton, who was promoted to Senior Designer!

NEW DESIGNERS!  Help us welcome Claudia Watkins, Robyn Gough, and Ruby Rynne, three wonderful NEW designers to join Team Digital.
NEW APPRENTICE DESIGNERS!  We also welcome four NEW apprentice designers to the team: Heidi Kuester, Susie Lancaster, Sarah Broderick, and Teresa Loman. 

NEW DSU INSTRUCTORS & CLASSES!  NEW instructors Melissa Green, Christine Gundersen, and Erica Belton will be offering NEW classes at DSU soon!

NEW STAFF MEMBERS! We’ll be adding NEW moderators to help keep the site running smoothly, with Tara Dreier as the NEW Community Manager! A NEW events team, led by Meg Beverly, the NEW Events Manager, will help run our current and exciting NEW events throughout the year.

NEW SHARING OPTIONS!  DSP is all over the web. So be our friend, pal, fan, follower, or buddy, whatever site or app you prefer!  You’ll also find ways to share your latest find in the DSP Shop right on the product pages as you shop!

NEW WAYS TO GIVE!  With the NEW DSP Pals, you can now send gift certificates to your pals without asking for their emails! You can even send them anonymously! 
NEW MOTIVATION!  We want to inspire you to meet YOUR scrapping goals!  A NEW way to keep track is Flair! Meet a goal, then add Flair to your signature! Try a challenge, take a class, finish a layout… add Flair!  What on earth is Flair? Get more information here!  Proudly display your shiny NEW Flair in your signature and show everyone that you’re meeting your goals!

NEW THEMES! To help you reach those goals, DSP will provide themes and prompts throughout the year!  We'll feature a monthly theme, plus related weekly prompts, and daily suggestions to help you. By the end of 2009, you can be a master scrapper who has scrapped what YOU wanted, learned what YOU wanted, and achieved YOUR scrapping goals!

NEW PARTNERSHIP!  Aw come on, we have to keep SOME secrets around here!  Watch for more big news soon as we announce an exciting opportunity for DSP and YOU!  New software, features, products, and services, you don't want to miss this!

NEW YEAR!  We hope you’re as excited as we are about 2009 and that you have a very HAPPY NEW YEAR at DSP! 

Margie Lundy

DSP CEO

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Upcoming 2009 DSP Crops and Events:

Monthly Crop – repeats first Friday of every month Troy, Ohio

Laptop Crop in Salt Lake City -  Utah on January 17, 2009

Please check here for those interested in any crops that may be happening in your area.

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Here is a wonderful opportunity to ask questions about DSP and digital scrapbooking. Whether it’s a question about navigating the site or how to get started, someone will be on hand to give you the answers. 

Posting Your First Layout:

Are you thinking about posting your first layout? There's a special first layout challenge each months for you. Post your first layout to DSP this month and you may be a random winner for a free page kit!! You'll find all the information here

Welcome to DSP! We know you will love it!

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Some Useful Links:

Blogger

facebook

flickr

myspace

twitter

Club Digital

Each month you receive a wonderful selection of scrapbooking products. Something to suit every style and level of digital scrapper.

You will always receive 2 complete page kits, one plopper or an overlay and an alphabet, some great word art and more - a font and a set of png "stamps" for your scrapping pleasure and don't forget the quick click template included in each club digital pack. 

All this for the incredible price of $5.99 or even less!!! 

That's well over $23 value for such a great price 

The longer you subscribe - the cheaper it becomes and the better value for you!!!!!

Buy a 3 month subscription and go into the draw to be upgraded to a 6 month subscription, by a 6 month and you might win an upgrade to a 12 month subscription, and all those who buy a 12 month subscription will go into the draw for a $30 coupon for the DSP store. 

In addition every month there is an exclusive contest for club digital subscribers with great prizes.

Get your new years scrapbooking off to a roaring start with this super selection of products in this months  Club Digital issue. There are 2 pagekits, one bright and cheerful to scrap your new years photos and one elegant and more traditional in muted blues and greens.  There is a versatile single photo plopper, and you will also find some fun and bold snowflake stamps, some new year word art and a versatile gel square alphabet. Have some fun with the quick click which features a trendy bracket shape, and don't forget the exclusive font.

This months content includes:

Club Digital now comes in a choice of resolutions - Choose 200ppi or the new 300ppi version when you download.  

Here is a selection of layouts created by the DSP designers using this months Club Digital Selection.

Click here to subscribe to Club digital today

Click here to subscribe to Club Digital today!

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It's Shop Time! 

Shop Time Inspiration by Erica

It’s time to SHOP… let’s get those baskets at the ready. 

Is your New Year's Resolution to scrap more pages?! Club Digital can help - Monthly content delivery of Fun Graphics!
*Good for new subscriptions only.  Cannot be added on to existing subscriptions.

This month we’re taking a different slant on Shop Time! 
After maxing out our budget on all the fantastic DSP sales that have taken place the last month and watching our growing Galleries strain under the weight of all the new layouts we’ve uploaded, we’re ready to take stock and organise all the wonderful products we’ve purchased from DSP during 2008.  One way to do this is to write a review of those products. Did you know that DSP has a special area to do just that? 

What exactly is a review anyway?
A simple definition as it relates to DSP is: A critical evaluation of a product.  The most important element of a review is that it’s a commentary that you make and allows you to tell the product’s designer and other people what you thought of that particular product. Typically a review is brief and focuses on the product and not the designer.

So how do I write a review at DSP?
To access the review area just find the product you’d like to review and click on the product image this takes you to the ‘Add To Cart Page’ and at the bottom left you’ll see this sign   Write A Review on This Page, click on this and it takes you to the comment box and star ranking, type your review and also give a star ranking if you want. Couldn’t be simpler.

I posted this comment on my Blog a few weeks back but I’m sure I speak for all DSP Designers when saying this:
Sometimes we forget to say thank you…
...but it's not intentional, for me the review area of DSP is not somewhere I check often and I feel bad that I don't after reading all the glowing comments about my designs that you have left me.  It's hard to find the right place to say this BIG THANK YOU so I'm posting it here in the hopes that those wonderful members that have taken the time to leave comments in the review section of DSP, will see it here and know that I am humbled by your generous remarks, I'm not really surprised though because the members at DSP are renown for their generosity throughout the forums and gallery's.  Hugs to you all.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, your encouraging words truly mean so much to me.

Happy New Year and I hope 2009 brings you all the things you desire.

Don’t forget our January Club Digital is now in the shop, the designers at DSP are the best there are and you get an awesome deal when subscribing to Club Digital – all your favourite designers delivered direct to your inbox at the beginning of each month, can’t get much better than that.

Happy shopping…
Erica

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Today is where your book begins…

The New Year always seems to generate excitement. Perhaps because there is a feeling that a New Year offers a fresh start, like a blank new page in a book that allows you to write a whole new chapter in your life. It is a time to make resolutions and decisions, a time to think about sorting, organizing and planning for the year ahead.

My starting point was to use the Family Organizer Quick Click Template. The kitchen really is the heart of our home, so it seems logical for me to print out my Family Organizer and put it on the fridge door with magnetic strips where all the family can see it. I might not always good at opening paperwork to see what I need to do that day – but I am good at hunting in the fridge for things to snack on! So you might say I am even exploiting my weakness! The other option you could use for similar effect is Letter Monthly Desk Calendar, which has a place for notes. It is also a great way to show off existing layouts. 

For my resolutions and inspirational reminders, I also decided to create mini-layouts on magnetic photo paper to use as fridge magnets, which can be changed and moved around. I used Alter your Attitude Word Art for the inspirational magnets and then added a couple of fun magnets to remind me about my diet and exercise resolutions. I “squashed” a bracket so I could fit four magnets per page (approximately A4/Letter Sized). To give the magnets a cohesive look, I used same background and photo frame for all of them. 

Planning ahead, I am definitely going to scrap my 2009 one month at a time at the month end. I love those Gogo Year Album  Monthly Templates by Suzanne Walker and A good year Quick Click by Lauren Bavin. The beauty about Quick Click Templates is that they can be customized with kits of your choice. For the time strapped digital scrapper, there are of course the gorgeous instant albums – What a year by Rene Bross, A Year to Remember by Tina Chambers and for a simple, yet stunning gift idea, try Lauren Bavin’s 5x7 Tag Year Book Instant Album. 

I love the lyrics to Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten – and my theme for 2009 is:

Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten…

Digi-Scrapper Inspiration by Meg 

Playing With Text

 

It's a whole new year, so let's start with some fun tricks to add extra flair to your layouts!  Text, whether titles, word art, or journaling, is a huge part of every layout.  So how can we bring it up a notch or two?  Here are just a few techniques for you to try:

 

Text Within a Photo:

Inserting text directly into a photo helps bring the viewer's eye to your focal point and is a fun way of adding interest to your photo!  You will need to extract a portion of your photo, in order to place the text behind it.  Here's a close up of the overlapping word art and photo in my layout: 

Extraction is taught in DSU classes 221 & 321 or you can use one of DSP's great tutorials for basic information, click here for Photoshop instructions or here for Paint Shop Pro instructions.

 

Image Inside Text:

A very popular technique to use is inserting an image inside text.  This is especially effective on titles or short greeting messages on cards.  Emma Powell created a wonderful Photoshop tutorial for this.  Or you can go BIG with one of Elizabeth Weaver's awesome Word 2 Page Quick Clicks!

 

Text on a Path:

I think one of the most effective text treatments is to place it on a path.  You can bend your journaling around or along an element (Paint Shop Pro tutorial), have it wrap within a shape (Photoshop tutorial), or, as I did in the layout above, have your text flow in free-form shapes to fit your theme.  Lauren Bavin's DSU classes 211 & 311 (offered in January, hurry to join in!) cover paths, as does Lisa Carter's DSU 225. There is so much design flexibility when you remove the constraints of straight lines! 

 

Let's start 2009 off with some fun! Let your text shine as brightly as the rest of your layouts and try something new!

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Be inspired some more - check out the current edition of  Inspiration Station News

Contests, Challenges and Chats

Designer Exclusives: Our Designers are the best there are and they are really generous, if you enter one of their challenges you’re more than likely to receive a chat and/or posting bonus just by using their nominated kit for the challenge. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain – like more stash for less bucks with these great challenges. 

Featured Designer:  Tina Chambers - Senior Designer  
Freebs With Tina
Tina's Designs
Tina's Gallery

Team Letter: Margie Lundy - DSP CEO
Margie's Gallery

Inspiration Station (IS News)
This is a call to all dedicated DSP scrappers to ‘strut your stuff’ and inspire us with your creations. Just choose any or all of the calls for layouts the current month and you could be showcased in our Newsletter or Blog. We have a few rules so check them out and then join in the fun. 

Calls for January
This month’s calls will include:

Color:  Blue
Events: Winter Snow Fun and Beginner of Summer in SHemi inc beach... hey ... beach and snow!!
Style / Trend:  Retro
Club Digital:  January 2009

Be inspired some more - check out the current edition of  Inspiration Station News 
Click Here for Previous Issues

Scrap with the DET – Digital Elite Team and DET Alumni
Our past and current Elite group of scrappers have some great challenges going at the moment and you’re sure to get well chosen CC should you need it – learn from the best.

Get it off Auto – Lauren and Jennifer
Weekly How To basics for everyone who wants to learn more about their camera capabilities.

The Grannies
If you’re a Granny or a Granny In Training (GIT) or just a Wannabee, you might like to see what other Grannies are up to, what challenges they have going. There is never a dull moment when you join this happy band of digi scrappers.

2008 Baby Albums – lianne99 (Tara)
You should go see some of these adorable albums of our future digi scrappers – join Tara and all the other mothers in celebrating your little ones life.

DET Boot Camp – Run fortnightly with different leaders
This is great training ground for all DET hopefuls; it’s about honing your skills ready for the next DET Contest. It’s also the place if you just want to gets some really great CC to help you move to your next level of accomplishment.

IOTW - Item of the week – Abby
The Item Of The Week is a priced to sell and generally cost only a few cents so create a LO using only the IOTW and be in the draw to win a free kit.

SNL - Saturday Night Live - MarsOlson & Debbers
This is where anyone can create their own digital scrapbook kits to share with other SNL’ers, from elements and papers to word art.

This is just a small selection of popular challenges that DSP currently has running but be sure to check all of them out here. And we have a special blinkie to place in your signature to always remind you where to find the best scrapbooking challenges on the web. Check the end of the first post in the What's Happening thread for the blinkie code.

Happy Scrapping!

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We are always striving to make our newsletter more interesting and useful. If you have an idea, let us know about it! If it's an article idea, a feature, even something you'd like to write, shout it out to us. So, put your thinking caps on and come up with some new features, article ideas, or something fun you'd like to see in our monthly newsletter. Then email it to comments@dsplace.com. (Please type "Newsletter IDEA" in the subject line of your email.) We can't wait to see your ideas!

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Newsletter Freebie

Exclusively for our newsletter readers, DSP Senior Designer, Tina Chambers has created this gorgeous set of Heart Elements.  Grab them here! Size: 200ppi or 300ppi

Thanks Tina!

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