We Will Remember Them

Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday. It's an international day when we commemorate the war dead. I hope the layout above puts it succinctly.  It really isn't a difficult concept. I get that the US Veterans Day is slightly different and wouldn't expect American people to honour it any way except in their own way. However, there are (mostly) American digital scrapbooking stores who have international customers and international Facebook subscribers/fans. It really isn't a difficult concept to grasp that Facebook is international and a quick look at their paypal receipts will tell them where their customers are.

They just can't resist a marketing opportunity with money off and ridiculous games. One store last year offered 11% off 11 kits at 11 o'clock and other nonsense. It was as if she was trying to find 11 ways to offend people When you write to complain they will tell you they're celebrating a holiday and that everyone loves it. Really? Is this what the American people want? Sell, sell, sell at every opportunity with no respite to commemorate the dead? I can't believe that. Fight back. Write and tell them this is not acceptable. This is NOT some jolly holiday to turn  into a marketing opportunity. They should be ashamed.Very ashamed.

My grandfather did not spend four days trapped in a flooded trench with the dead bodies of his friends so that someone can make a quick buck. I can't tell you how disgusting that is to me as I don't have the words. It makes me feel physically sick.

I wrote to a few stores last year but this year I have more clout. I run the Digi Scrapping Freebies group and have banned any links that go to the"holiday" offers. No posts will be made at all tomorrow. It's already lost me some friends but so be it. I'll be unsubscribing from their newsletters and Facebook pages and those designers don't get to post on my FB groups either. we all have to do what we can to stop this vile practice. Clearly only money talks. So withdraw your spending!

Artist credits:

Remembrance Sunday: The kit is Natali Designs' In My Garden and the photo is Tyne Cot Cemetery in Ypres, Belgium]

Joe Hills: Quickpage from Belle de Nuit by Laitha's Deigns and Valentina Creations. Poppies from Natali's kit above.

Here's my grandfather:

Getting The Most Out Of iDSD

The hoodley what now? You'd have to be VERY new to digital scrapbooking not to know that iDSD is International Digital Scrapbooking Day. The first confusing thing about it is it seems to be more than a day. It's more of a 4 day thing from 1 - 4 November as different stores start at different times but TODAY is the big day.

There are a gazillion freebies and special offers BUT, make no mistake, this is a MARKETING event run by the digi stores and their aim is to sell you as much as possible. Your aim is to get as much free stuff as possible whilst getting some good deals on kits you've been lusting after.

First of all, DON'T PANIC. Brits -  feel free to shout that several times in a Corporal Jones voice.

FREEBIES

We have that covered. Join the Digi Scrapping Freebies group on Facebook and you'll find links to all the cool stuff and a list of blog trains and Facebook hops (in the File section). It's useful to know the links are there so you haven't got to rush round frantically finding and saving them. Of course, if you do find one we haven't got please post it!

The most important tip about Freebies is don't download stuff just you don't want or need just because it's free. There lies madness.

There are more detailed tips on how to save time, work efficiently and get a ton of stuff on our main site HERE.

BLOG/FACEBOOK HOPS

We have thirteen of these - at the last count - on Digi Scrapping Freebies so you don't have to go chasing around the web.  Yikes! Thirteen!! The article on the link above has lots of tips on blog hops.

Start with the My Memories one because you add the freebies to your account and can download them later which saves you a ton of stress. You don't need to have My Memories software to use the freebies. Just download the "general" files. as everyone knows, though. I use My Memories all the time and have made thousands - really - layouts easily. Go HERE for a good deal on MyMemories and access to our private tutorial group.


GOOD DEALS (???)

I regard at least 40% off as a good deal and tend to ignore the rest BUT lots of stores do deals at other times of the year so don't stress over it. Just make you sure really need (OK, want ...) the kits before exercising credit card.

There will be coupons - Some will come in the kits you download and some will come in emails. Save them in separate folders for later.

CHECK YOUR STASH

Designers tend to move about a lot from store to store or one store takes over another one. When the designer is new to the store their kits will be in the new products section. This is fair enough but they might not be new to you. It's really annoying to buy something you already have! That is definitely not a good deal. I file all my kits twice on two separate external hard drives - once under themes and once under designer names. There will be more tips on this in an article shortly. However you do it try to make sure you haven't already got the kit. If it looks familiar to your there might be a reason for that!

UNZIP AND TIDY UP

If you download stuff all day then you're faced with a mammoth unzipping task guess what will happen? You'll get fed up and delete the lot. That's what I did one year when I got to August and realised I hadn't unzipped stuff from the May NSD. As you're unzipping, if you don't like it or you're not going to use then delete it! There is no point in clogging up your computer.

TAKE A BREAK

Sick of people trying to part you and your cash? Take a break in the Digi Scrapping Tips group on Facebook. It's a completely advertising-free zone where you can show your layouts, get help, join in challenges etc. We have a weekly challenge every Monday and a daily word challenge. Plus chat of course. And absolutely no ads!

Eva Kipler

Eva was one of the first designers I ever came across when I first started in digital scrapbooking. She was immensely talented and I must have about sixty of her kits. I was so sad to learn she'd passed away suddenly on 30 October. I learned this just after I learned another friend had gone to prison. Some days you just wish the internet never existed and Tim Berners-Lee had invented a new vacuum cleaner.

Here are just a few pages made with Eva's kits. We have an album on Digi Scrapping Tips here if you'd like to add to it.

Finally, a tablet thingy....

We are well behind with technology in our house. I have one of those phones that's attached to the wall and my mobile phone is a...well, it's a telephone. That's all it is. I rarely leave the house anyway and when I do I want to get away from the internet, thank you very much. I even have one of those old lady phones with the big buttons!

 Since we were a bit worried about being left behind we bought a Kindlefire. That was our excuse anyway. It's hours of amusement with the added joy of not owning any i-junk. If you fill it with high res photos you'll soon fill it up and adding high res photos to it is pointless anyway. The screen resolution is 1280 x 800 and I found that about a third of my scrapbook pages ( so that's at least 700 pages) looked pretty good cut down to that size. There's an article on Coastal Scrapbooks telling you how to do it. You also get to see a slideshow of my cut-downs!

 Kindlefire tip: You can hook the Kindlefire straight up to your computer and transfer photos over. However, if you do that they will all end up in one album and that's not very convenient. If you add them to your Amazon Cloud instead you can put them into albums. They won't take up much room since you already shrunk them. Then access your cloud the Kindlefire and download each album. You can access them on the cloud any time but it's nice to have some photos for when you have no Wifi (like at my Mum's house!)