So what is this RAK business anyway, I hear you ask? Well, quite simply, and literally, a RAK is the abbreviation for a Random Act of Kindness, a familiar expression used to describe all those selfless acts we perform on a daily and sometimes not so daily basis. This expression has been borrowed by fellow scrapbookers far and wide to mean something quite different, and we've even managed to make a verb out of it, believe it or not!

Basically, there are no hard and fast rules to this quickly evolving art form, and as long as you always remember to retain the essence of a RAK, that is the Kindness part, you can pretty much go about it any way you wish to. Just to make it easy for you though, I'm going to give you a few ideas just to get you started!

There are two ways to choose from and your comfort zone and requirement for surprise, will determine which one you choose. Traditionally, a RAK was intended to contain the element of surprise therefore the recipient couldn't know anything about it. In this route, you would mosey through the gallery and when you find a layout with some photos you like the look of, click on that layout, right click with your mouse and save to your hard drive. You can then extract the photos using your software of preference and use as you would with any of your photos. Obviously your extraction will be low resolution but they will serve their purpose perfectly well. After you have uploaded your finished RAK to the gallery and the surprise has been delivered, you can then arrange with the recipient to get the higher resolution images and slot them into your layout.

This brings me to the second method of RAKing, and that is to forgo the element of surprise and make your chosen recipient fully aware of your intentions. This puts the ball in their court and gives them the choice as to whether they wish to be RAKed or not as the case may be. The majority will choose the former and email the photos of their choice to your specified email address. If you choose to take this route, it's handy also to ask what size layout they usually scrap. It would be pointless doing a 12 X 12 layout if your recipient scraps in 8.5 X 11. This is an obvious example, but it's not always so clear in the gallery what size a layout has been scrapped in. What I'm saying is, we all scrap different sizes and it can save you a lot of work if you know up front.

Happy Scrapping everyone!
(article originally written by Anna aka Mom2EllaRose. See the article in its entirety in the February 2004 Ezine)

Thanks for sharing Anna's article. Now I get what the heck RAK is. I'm trying to watch how much money I spend on my hobbies these days and haven't been buying the ezine as a result.

Stacy

Good to know! I thought thats what RAK stood for. I didn't realize that it was a surprise thing, I thought that photos were exchanged. How fun! -Alison

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Ali Folendore
Designing exclusively for Scrapbook-Bytes