X is for XEROX & HOME PRINTING #AtoZChallenge

Hi again and welcome to my blog. For the month of April I will be posting everyday as part of the A to Z Blog Challenge, my theme: Scrapbooking.

Today’s letter is a different type of scrapbooking technique – X is for XEROX and HOME PRINTING.

Xerox and home printing is the utilization of a printer to add images and quotes to your scrapbook pages.

On the surface this may seem like kind of a technical way to scrapbook, but I find it most useful.

I’ll be going into more detail with this with tomorrow’s letter (Y is for YEAR IN REVIEW), but the first page in each of my books is called the “Buh-Bye” page, and it’s where I chronicle the previous year's major pop-culture and worldly events.

I started doing this early in my scrapbooking hobby because I found dedicating one page to media trends easier than sprinkling them in-between my life events.

Modern-Day Example: A page that's half Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino and half my friend’s wedding.

Yeah – I don’t think my friend will appreciate me adding neon sprinkles to her moment.

So, to keep the sequence (and the blood sugar) in check, I keep the outside world restricted to its own designated area.

This leads to the creative conundrum – How do you compact a year’s worth of happenings into a few 12x12 pages?

Annnnd this is where Xerox and home printing saves the day. I can scale down and control the size of the images and text to fit the space I have available.

To start, home printing requires the same equipment seen in the N is for NEGATIVES and PHOTO STORAGE post. There a lot of scanner/printer combination machines that you can buy for $80.00, and printer-only options for around $30.00.

Once installed, I typically copy and paste an image or news story to a blank Word document.

I used the birth of April the giraffe’s long awaited male calf for this example.

Once I have the desired layout in the height and width I need, I simply print, clip, and tape onto the page.

And TA-DA. A baby giraffe (with Unicorn Frap representation underneath J ).

Ink refill cartridges can be a bit pricey, but that is the only real con. Other than those miscellaneous costs, adding images using home printing is fast and easy.

That crosses another letter off our list, and then there was TWO! Please leave a comment if you’d like, I’d love to hear what you think about the post, theme, or an invite to check out my fellow AtoZers blogs.

This weekend wraps up our blog challenge, so I hope to see you back here tomorrow – Y is for YEAR IN REVIEW.

-         SNG