After Black Friday Giveaway

Hello!

Have you recuperated from your Thanksgiving gluttony?  Did you partake of the Black Friday mania?  I did not... I do most of my shopping online, anyway.  I'm not a fan of grumpy shoppers. I AM a fan of happy shoppers. I try to be the latter, and I always try to make the cashier smile.  But mostly, I just fire up Amazon.com or other sites to shop at.

Well, one of the sites I was browsing recently is My Memories.

And today, as the image above suggests, I'm doing a giveaway for their software!  (Keep reading for info on how to win!)

I don't know if you were reading way back when, when I decided I thought I maybe might want to try digital scrapbooking.  I own Photoshop and I've seen what wonderful things people have made, digi-wise.  Of course, it's taken me nearly two years to dabble in it to see if it's something I like.  One of my delays was simply: Photoshop. I enjoy it for certain reasons, but I did not want to take the extra time to learn some of the tricks I thought were involved with digi scrapbooking.  I know there are classes out there at Jessica Sprague, and I have considered but never jumped.  Then I found My Memories digital scrapbooking suite.

I'll be honest.  They approached me and asked me to give it a try.  It was good timing.  I was finally ready to try something new and (hopefully) easy on the side of digi/hybrid.  So, why  not?  I downloaded the software and dabbled in it for a while.

I was pretty pleased with what they offered.  Now, to be fair, I have not spent days and days in the software, but I did spend about 8 hours in it, playing and figuring things out.  I did not watch any tutorial, but I know there are some, including this one:

Now, what did I think? Overall, I liked it and I think it'll be something I will use over and over again.  That said, I'm never giving up traditional scrapbooking...

My Memories Suite was sufficiently easy for the beginner (me).  I am thankful I'm computer savvy, though, but if you hover over different buttons for the screen tip, anyone can easily get started, even someone who isn't all that computer savvy.  What I liked best is I didn't have to think, or create, my own "things".  I just basically used the "drag and drop" method to pull things over and then simple editing tools to change colors and shading.  The package comes with some papers and embellishments, very basic.  Of course, there are plenty of add-ons over at their site, where I spent many hours browsing and downloading.  There are many FREE downloads, and then the priced packages are there too, which are much more robust.  And, if you have downloaded digi supplies from other vendors, you can pull those in too while you're working on a layout.

My Memories is also a great design tool, which I might use as well to create sketches.  But it's certainly more versatile than as a sketch machine.

Let me share my very first, baby-steps digi layout with you (be gentle):

I spent a long time on this, even though it's very simple.  Mostly because I was playing around with this feature or that feature so I was moving things around a lot.  This is "all me" in that I didn't use a premade sketch or drag-n-drop template.  I just placed things and moved things around, changed the colors and the papers several times, added embellishments and deleted them.  Wished for a "splatter"  but couldn't find one in the items I downloaded (although I'm sure there was one out there somewhere).  I settled on the swirly doodle.  The best part of the layout?  It was a wonderful Inside Out moment for me and working through my residual depression over losing Hunter last March.

After spending so much time on that layout, I used a preloaded template for this one:

Snip Snap!  This sucker was done in 5 minutes.  Now, THAT was gratifying!  Yes, I do believe I like it.

How to Win:

Now, today is YOUR day to win a chance to get this software for FREE.  Seriously, all you have to do is leave a comment and tell me why you digi (or want to digi) to win a free downloadable copy of this fabulous software.   For an extra chance to win, visit the My Memories site and view their digi kits and tell me which one you like the best.  Yet another opportunity to put your name in the hat: follow their blog, like them on Facebook or follow them in Twitter and then come back and leave another comment telling me which one(s) you did.  That's up to five chances to get your name into the hat.  This will be open for comments  until 5pm Eastern Time on Friday, December 2nd.  Please pass the word...

If you don't want to play along to win, but you like what you see and want it NOW, click the blinkie to the right for $10 off My Memories Suite and use the code below the blinkie.  Using that code will also give you a $10 off coupon for downloads, so that's $20 in savings.  Pretty good deal.

It's fun, it's easy, and it could be yours for FREE!  What a great holiday gift to yourself.