Digital News

It’s been an interesting time whilst I’ve been off sunning myself in Menorca. Several new design stores have “come out” in the Promos4Digis adverts, one has a grand opening, and another is still keying up for some new designers come the end of the month.

Divine Digital Opening 1st July

With Royanna Fritschsmann returning to Divine Digital, the last week has seen several divine ads towards the Divine Digital store opening. With such a Divine name, the theme was rife with sky shots, one of my favourite being this one below -

 

Scrapbook Graphics Studio Girls 30th June

The other much awaited unveiling is that of the 10 designers or Studio Girls opening up at Maya’s Scrapbook Graphics. Maya has been sending out some incredibly interesting little adverts herself for this. My favourite is profiled below. Simply because - it features cake.

 

Changes at Digitals

Digitals has revamped and added new services for customers. Of most importance to me (at least) is the fact that the gallery is now open to all designer usage. This means anyone using any elements by designers not necessarily working from Digitals can now upload layouts to the gallery. Many digital consignment stores have a closed gallery - you can only upload layouts created using elements bought from that store itself. Perhaps with more open galleries like this one, we will one day stop seeing the multiple uploads of layouts created from creative team members to fill a quota for their designers, and more open sharing of layouts for the sake of the design, without restrictions to designer usage.

Additionally the tutorial section at Digital Scrapbook Pages is expanding also.

Another Absolutely Fabulous Designer Searches for a Creative Team

JoDe Lawrence, often known as Digital Bits, who has until recently sold through her own store at Altered Scrapping, is now selling at Scrapbook Bytes also (great choice!). Digital Bits is one of my own favourite designers (amongst many, I must add), and she is now advertising for “some kind of creative team”. This is one of the ones I may have been tempted to go for personally, if I could find the time to give to it properly. She is looking for eclectic scrappers (my kitchen sink approach may be precisely what she’s after), and once you’ve sent in some things (below) you might well be lucky enough to celebrate JoDe’s *UN*style just like me. Mail your submissions into digitalbits@ALTEREDscrapping.com

• A 600x600 pixel layout you consider your finest work to date and ‘why.’
• Links to your galleries, minimum of 2.
• A brief list of your favorite digital scrapbook designers [ don’t you dare include me.]

The New Guys

These ones were new to me, having just started to advertise through promo4digis. Lots of new boutiques and designers recently - it must be summer.

• Sweet Shoppe Designs took on five new designers - Melany Violette, Amy Bleser, Angela Barton, Amanda Rockwell and Lauren Grier. Their designs will appear instore from 1st July.
  
• The Scrap Habit is a new store (on me!) with designers Alma Townsend and Misty Cato.
  
• Polka Dot Potato - is a new web business for digitals, owned by Ashley Smith, and her hubbie Ben. Ashley might be better known to paper-based scrappers as the owner of a company called Magic Scraps, which in 2004 was acquired by Advantus and has only this week been announced as being discontinued  (via Angie Pedersen’s Scrapbook Industry News Blog). Magic Scraps was the first company out there doing metal tags with the first embossing tool for scrapbookers. The Magic Scraps glass pebbles were another innovative product. I’m sure Ashley’s inroads into digital scrapbooking will be equally interesting. The Polka Dot Potato store has ten digital designers.
  

Disc Talk Radio

The Digital Scrapbooking Talk Radio website is this week onto Edition 4, but it is the Edition 2 and 3 which I have missed. Being a brand new IPOD owner (my birthday was a vry. gd. one, as Bridget Jones may have diarised), I am downloading them as I go from the archives available online.. Scrapability is meant to briefly be mentioned in the 2nd Edition, which discusses blogging. And the third edition has an interesting episode entitled “So What is Digital Scrapbooking Anyway?” This is by Alicia Bull, who is a project manager for Disc Talk Radio, as well as being on design teams within the industry. Alicia is about to, according to the DTR blurb, open up her own digital store also this summer called Digital Mod Designs.

You can choose to listen online from the archive links, or go to the blog for direct downloads of the MP3s. Subscribe to the blog itself, to be notified of new editions each week.