As with all identities, they change. My blog is following my identity and changing as well. I will occasionally write a product review, but the main focus is going to be on books. I love book tours.
As many of you know, I like to scrapbook. I like making cards out of scrapbook stuff as well as make my own photo memories. I really am not that good at the scrapbooks themselves, but I try really hard. I can make some really awesome cards though (check them out here). In trying to learn more about scrapbooking and to get better ideas for what I do, I have been looking into digital software. The one application I have found talked about a lot is My Memories Suite. As a member of Mom Blog Society, I found out that My Memories was looking for new reviewers and blogs to giveaway a copy of their digital scrapbooking software. I was very excited to learn about the opportunity and now here I am! I was given a copy of the My Memories Suite to review and at the bottom of this post you will find your chance to win a copy for yourself! How cool is that?
This is the first piece of digital scrapbooking software I have tried out and I must say that it was EASY! I am more of an old fashioned paper and stickers kind of girl, but this was so simple and now I have a scrapbook I can share in digital format and even as a video. I took all my Christmas pictures and put them into one of their built-in Album Designs using their Designer Template Option.
You have several built-in album themes you can choose from when you create your album and on their website, there are other free packages you can download as well as one you can buy. If you have a particular theme in mind for your album, you can design it yourself. The software offers many of the items you would use in paper and sticker scrapbooks that are all divided out by the names you would recognize as an experienced scrapbooker. For my first experience, I chose the Holiday Snows theme as you can see below.
Once you choose the theme you want (if you are using an existing one), it shows you all the page layouts with that theme and allows you to add or remove pages if you do/son't like a particular page. I really liked this feature. I kept all the pages in my theme, but I have noticed in other themes that sometimes there is a page that really doesn't fit what I am doing. I can simply remove it from the list of pages and the software won't use it when I add my photos.
Once you have your pages selected, you are given two options for your photos. You can put them in yourself, or have them inserted into the pages automatically. For my first time, I chose to let the software do it. I wanted to find out what it could do. I put it to the test with 103 Christmas photos. Now when I saved my photos on my computer, I renamed them because I am an organization freak. I have to have the date on every photo and some meaningful name to tell me what is in the photo. The downside to that is that renaming my photos also reorganizes them out of chronological order. We had three Christmas gatherings on Christmas day. When I renamed them, they got all mixed up. Obviously, I did not expect the software to recognize which photos went together and I didn't want my scrapbook to be out of order. My test with the automatic insertion of photos was to see how I could rearrange the photos so that they are grouped the way I wanted them to be. The answer was way easier than I expected. I added the photos to the dialog box and then simply dragged the photos around in the box to where I wanted them to be! So simple! You can see in the pictures that I moved the last picture shown to the 3rd to last one.
After the pictures were put into my template, I was then able to go page by page to nudge photos around to where I wanted them. I added text and other embellishments. I even added imprints to pages. There wasn't a lot that needed to be one because the template was pretty nice for my pictures already. After I finished making my book, I had to figure out a way to share it with all of you so you can get an idea of what the software can do. I found out that if you have the full version of the software (which one lucky reader will win!) you get a free add-on to turn your scrapbooks into movies. I made a movie out of my book to share with all of you.
I was given a copy of My Memories Suite to try out for this review, but all opinions expressed in this review are my own.
As a special bonus to my readers, if you are interested in BUYING the My Memories Suite software, You can use my special code to get $10 off! When you are ready to check out, enter the code STMMMS15347 to take off $10 of your total order. It's just that simple. I recommend you copy and paste the code just to make sure ou don't put it in incorrectly!
One lucky reader will win a copy of My Memories Suite V3. You can enter in as many or as few ways as you want. The winner will be randomly drawn on January 8th and notified via email. They will have 48 hours to respond to my email before I draw a new winner. Good luck!
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Mom Blog Society. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
