I’ve really tried to get on board with digital layouts. However, I have some fundamental issues with them that prevent me from getting there.
For myself, crafting is about escaping. I may turn on some music or throw in a DVD for background noise, but then I get into my project and enjoy it because of what it is. I like the textures of the papers and seeing what papers will work where. I like trying something big and having it fail, then I take it all apart and start over having learned what I could do better. In the end, my fingers are frequently covered in paint, chalk, ink, or glue. There are tiny bits of paper that will need to be vacuumed up scattered around my chair. I need all of that. Digital scrapbooking would certainly be neat and clean, but I wouldn’t be pulling away from the computer and it wouldn’t be nearly messy enough.
As for digital layouts I see in the world, I tend to not care much for them either. They can be very beautiful and elaborate, which has a lot of appeal initially. I always seem to be drawn to them at first, but when I look closer they are missing a certain je ne sais quoi. When a person has spent time touching, selecting, gluing, repositioning, stressing and fixing it shows in the final product. You can see the love they felt, the emotion they intended. That is when scrapbooking elevates itself to art for me — when one leaves a bit of soul on the work they’ve done. Digital layouts lack that. The focus is on using all the little pretty things that are not scraps of something else, on the “metal” embellishments that add no depth, on feeling free to use techniques that don’t need to be cleaned up after. I understand what sounds nice about that, but leaving out your heart doesn’t make for better memories. And besides, why would everyone want to create a page that looks so much like everyone else’s page that it looks like nobody in particular created it. That is as irritating in traditional scrapbooking as it is in digital.
That said, I have seen digital scrapbooking that is excellent. It happens when the artist truly expresses who she or he is, when they’ve left a bit of individual style on the page. And when the focus is on the memory and not trying to impress everyone else, things will always feel that much more beautiful.
Judge for yourself. Scrapbook.com has a digital layout gallery.