Digital Scrapbooking: Pros & Cons

I do occasionally add a paper element to my layouts, but I am pure digi for the most part. The main reason is, the kids can't get into my stash and steal stuff! My daughter has a fascination with cutting up paper and making birds and other creatures with it, and she has gotten into my older paper without permission on more than one occasion. We also live in a tiny rented duplex and there's just no room for working with physical scrapping materials here.

The drawback is, of course, the lack of tactile elements in my layouts, but those are easily added in, especially since I print individual layouts instead of making photobooks.

I love doing both. What I love about digital is the storage space. I live is a tiny tiny house (maybe 600 sq ft) and our "spare" bedroom only has a little walking room to get to my desk with all my paper & stamping supplies (knitting and sewing stuff fills the basement ). I like that when I'm done a layout or done for the night, I just save and shut down the computer. I also don't have to worry about my cat getting into my stuff and having glitter spread throughout the house. I also take some of my digital layouts (especially the ones I particularly like) and turn them into paper layouts. I especially like this one:

This is the digital:

And this is the paper rendition:

What does help is that I have an electronic die cutting machine (Craft Robo) (and a just newly purchased Zing ).

So, those are the biggest pros for digit scrapping for me.

As for drawbacks. I can't go through my cabinet and look at all the stuff I have all at once. And I tend to be a horder so it takes me longer to go through all my files to find what I want than what it does to actually make a layout. Its too easy to collect too much stuff with almost limitless cheap storage.

I just stuff them in the album. I try to use mostly stuff that won't get crushed too easily and I can only have so many pages in an album. I do like printing out my digital layouts and putting them into albums as well. I can print 2 back to back on a page and then it really cuts down on the bulk.

@Cat: Your clustering on the digital page is just fantastic!

I have to admit that dimension bothers me on paper pages. Always bothered. I like them with not too many layers, and I guess I´d never put a flair or a bottlecap in one of them. If I want a 3D thingy with paper I´ll probably do as Brandi said and make it as a paper art to hang on a wall.

However, I do paper scrap. What is working with me is to use paper scrap for mini albuns and digiscrap for long-term projects and this kind of page that you want to make, but aren´t sure if someday it will suit in a specific album or not.

Pros:
I can do whatever I want, giving me the freedom to create HOW I want.
less mess, don't have to plan time to clean up.
Can make multiple copies, and long distance sharing
My daughter can get me older scrap paper.

Cons:
slow computer machine, - when you're dealing with an old machine.

I saw long ago what happens when the real scrapbooks have to many extras. About 15 years ago, I was working with a gal that wanted me to scan her wedding photos. It was the album from the photography....what a first looked like a wonderfully expensive album. But the corner tabs were metal, and she had laid her albums on the side. The wedding album on the bottom, with her three children's albums on top. Every time the photo corners hit a photo on the opposite page, there was damage to the photo.

I had seen the old scrapbooking damages, where tape was used on photos and yellowed, or the magnetic albums that prematurely yellowed photos. The news paper clips that fell to pieces.

Of course there are the worried that the digital drives will crash, but I figure when a DVD will hold so many, and they cost less than a quarter, I can give 3 out to family, and that gives backups for whatever reasons.

I will say that one of the cons for me with digital has been a feeling that I need to perfectly measure and divide everything. I guess I've got more learning to do, to be able to do it all quickly.

The only "con" I can think of when it comes to digiscrapping is learning the software & then techniques... And while digiscrapping materials can be more economical (& you can re-use supplies or re-color them to fit your LO), I think having your LOs printed into a book costs more than making a traditional scrapbook. On the upside, the printed book will hold up for YEARS; whereas the glue, sticky tape, etc. on your traditional scrapbook will eventually release & your album will fall apart (as happened to my wedding album, which is why I need to re-do it & am contemplating scanning my photos and doing it digi-style this time).

With traditional scrapbooking it's pretty straightforward - glue, sticky tape, glitter, pens, scissors and what not - you're crafting. But, like a lot of you, the reason I never got into that (or stamping, for that matter....though I did go to a few stamping parties, made some cards & stationery and really enjoyed it) is I didn't have the room in the house.

I personally don't think there are any cons to digital scrapbooking all pros Well maybe just not enough hours in the day?
Gone for me are the days of a table piled high with papers, embellishments, glues, tools etc and moving things round on a page and ending up doing nothing. Then having to pack it all away again.
I save my pages and only print the books when they are on special - so for me that way having a beautiful bound photo book is way cheaper than spending heaps of money on scrapbooking supplies.
I LOVE digital scrapbooking

pros for digi- can make any shape, any color, and design,n you want tons of letter fonts can get packs, use things over and over, if you mess up you can change it.
cons for digi- most background papers look old, don't like scratchy backgrounds.

pros for tra- hands on more personal feelings involved, has better selections for paper tons of embellishments, can touch and feel
hold in hand, cant get erased have for ever
cons for tra- messy, more time consuming, takes up lot's of space, to many tools, can't use embellishments over and over,
once it's pasted it stays can move anything, if you mess up big time you have to start over again. Sometimes in stores you might not like the whole pack of papers, making it hard to find ones to go together.

I don't really think there are any cons to digi scrapping. The only one I can kind of think of is that I am lazy about printing pages out... so most of my layouts are just in a gallery somewhere and family members don't see them. But I did print one book last year that had of some of my fave pages.

It felt so good to give my too many "non-digi" supplies away and go digi, for all the reasons above. I have a scanner so I can include ephemera or memorabilia. (A camera works for a lot of it also, especially with a rather inexpensive camera stand to hold it steady.)

I can organize into collections in Lightroom so I can use one digital element and put it into different folders without jamming my hard drive with duplicates. I don't need to worry if what I'm using is acid free. I have a large scale printer to print out my own pages which I put into acid free plastic covers and into albums. All this should hold up better than non-digi.

One thing I'm paranoid about and that is keeping backups. I have one backup, changed regularly in a safety deposit box, one at a daughter's house, one at home, and one I take with me in the car when I go anywhere. A fire could destroy all the work done on non-digi scrapbooks (unless they are scanned and kept as digital files). Much less chance that I might lose my pages with a good backup system.