A Christmas Giveaway: My Memories Suite Digital Scrapbooking Software!!

I don't do giveaways very often on this blog. Not that I don't love y'all, but it's just not my thing. For one, I'm terrible at mailing stuff. It requires showering, putting on makeup, wearing decent clothes, getting in my car, driving 20 minutes to the post office... and all that is only if I manage to get whatever I am giving away in an envelope, address it, and stamp it.

Yeah. Not likely.

But when My Memories asked if I wanted to offer my blog readers a digital download of their scrapbooking software, I thought, heck yeah!

I did a lot of scrapbooking years ago, but I admit that in the last five years or so I've done almost none of it because I don't have room or time to drag all the papers, scissors, stamps, embellishments, templates, brads, markers, ink, etc, out. I'd start a project and the dining room table would be a mess for the better part of a month or two before I'd have to put it all away unfinished so we could eat again.

Also, all my photos are digital, and getting them all uploaded to some photo site and printed was not happening. Not when I take 1300 photos at Disney, 600 at the beach, 300 on Christmas day.

A few years ago, I got a digital software program for doing scrapbooks on the computer. I thought the idea was brilliant. No more having to print up all of my photos! No more having to figure out how to make a 4x6 print fit a 5x7 space, or a 3x3 space. No more dining room messes. No more buying expensive papers and embellishments. Perfect!

Except it didn't work with my Mac and I rarely got on the desktop we keep in the basement. Also, my pictures were on my Mac, not the desktop. It just didn't happen.

So when My Memories Suite contacted me, I decided to try theirs out. It works on a PC or a Mac, comes with tons of pre-made templates that can be used exactly as is or completely customizable, works with any free papers and frames and embellishments I download off the internet, and can be used for any size project - both in height and width, and in pages.

Here's a few things I played around with:

(a quick note - I took screenshots of them rather than upload the full-sized pages, and so some have the dimensions in the corners. Obviously this is not what shows up in a real album!)

This is from their pre-made template. I just plugged in my own photos.

On the second one, I added the quote - their program lets you choose from any size and any font on your computer, any color, any layout you want, including adjusting the space between the lines - and I changed the photos to black and white. It was so easy peasy. This album is pages and pages of this same look - the red and white and simple block photos. I just picked two to give you an example of how easy and beautiful it is.

Here's another set:

In this first one, I just chose a classic layout that worked with the photos I wanted to put in. The two smaller photos were bigger than the template, so I changed the size of them to fit. The snowflakes were something I'd found for free off the internet.

In the second one I thought I'd add background paper. I chose a textured blue one, but it was a little dark for me, so I changed the opacity on it to 50% to lighten it up.

This is another example of creating my own page:

There are infinite kinds of background papers. You can choose any of their pretty good free selections that come with the program, buy more (they have a TON of great kits), find ones you like from online (there are thousands of free and for-sale ones), or just choose a color (any color at all). You can change the opacity of any of the above, so it can be as bold or as subtle as you want.

I made of collage of some of my cherry blossom photos - something that would have been very hard to do with prints, because I would have needed lots of different sizes.

 As you can see, I like things pretty clean and simple. I like straight lines and not a lot of fluff. But that's just my style. You can certainly bring your own style to it. Like this:

 The above is one of their templates. I plugged a photo in and saved. Less than ten seconds. The one below is made with a free packet off the internet that I found. There isn't a template here - I just mashed a bunch of things together.

The program is really easy to figure out, too. It didn't take much time for me to be zooming around in it. The layout looks like this:

It's not just for scrapbooking, though. You can make photo books, cards, videos, add music, etc. I initially hoped I could make blog headers and banners with it, but I couldn't figure out how to do it, although it would be simple enough to make an entire blog template. I have a feeling there are a lot of things you can do, though, that I just haven't had time to figure out.

Here's the great thing: My Memories has offered a $10 off code through this blog, so if you want to buy the software, you can do it at a steal of a price by clicking on the banner below and using the code STMMMS14934 in the checkout.

 
OR.... You could win it!

I am offering one person a FREE DOWNLOAD of the entire digital scrapbook software - a $39.97 value. Just click on the My Memories banner below, browse the kits and leave a comment in this post telling me which you like best.

For extra entries:

• tweet about it (1 entry)
• post on facebook (1 entry) 
• +1 this on Google+ (1 entry)
• or all of the above! 

You can do all of these by just clicking the buttons at the bottom of this post.

Make sure to put all of your entries in the comment section!

Next Monday (December 19, 2011) I'll post one winner. If I don't already have your email, make sure you leave that as well, so I can get back to you!

Good luck!