Just to play "devil's advocate" here and chime in on other things as well....several things to remember and think about.


If and when someone paper scrapped, they never made their own paper or elements. They bought the pieces from the store. Visit the major paper scrapping sites and MOST are owned by a store that sells those items created by some manufacturer. While they are getting some advertising out of it, I look at it as "OH WOW...GOTTA HAVE THAT because it would be PERFECT with this photo, blah blah blah". I may pay for that item, but I GAIN the best part - a BEAUTIFUL layout.

Now, I design digital kits myself, commercially - and do so because I like to create them, however, I cannot justify giving away EVERY single thing I make. I created things in the past for my own personal use and someone else wanted a piece of what I made and then another and so on. When more than a couple of people love your style, or design work I look at it as I've put a LOT of time into my designs and I should sell some (Mary Englebriet doesn't give it away). I have a HUGE creative team and do give away items to them for free because 1) I don't need the money (my full time job pays plenty) and 2) because these are people I've followed on the net and have admired their work. I want to "share" my work for free with them because I know they like what I do, they are appreciative of it and they'll use it. Sure, because they post their work my things get seen. So would it if I was a designer for Making Memories or Chatterbox.

Again - not to ruffle feathers, but to bring up a mere point about the other side of this.

I TOTALLY encourage designing your own elements, etc. But, remember, not everyone has the time to do that or the skills set. I've been trying to teach my mother how to resize a picture for over a year now, and no luck - she's better at just using my kits!

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*holly*