You've come to the right place. Plenty of inspiration and help here. I also started with a couple of scrapbook programs then moved on to Photoshop Elements 2. Your program will be helpful to you as a new scrapper as it probably contains a lot of templates to help you get started. My advice is to just dive in. Good suggestions from ninjntje above.

Once you get a feel for the program be sure to play with EVERYTHING. It will give you an idea of what styles you like, etc. You'll know when you've outgrown the program because you'll find youself thinking, "If only I could..."

Be sure to check out the gallery. You can learn a lot by studying composition, colors and journaling techniques of others. And don't be afraid to ask questions.

Have fun! Looking forward to seeing your layouts in the gallery.

Carole

wow! thanks for the warm welcome and the great responses.

Is there a place here that gives an explaination of what things are? like elements and brushes and all these other wonderful things? I've been going through trying to understand this scrapbooking "terminolgy" and I'm getting lost just at that.. lol But hopefully I'll grasp things as I go

I was just going to ask the same thing! Not being familiar the the lingo makes it a little confusing at times. Do you have a thread with the terminology? I have never computer scrapped at all, and am looking at various programs etc...this has been most helpful. TFS.

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scrap happy and loving it!!!!

As I still am a beginner I have had just the same questions you do.
I desided to ignore them as I started off with the first tutorials (photoshop isn't easy to start with, but with this help I'm learning fast)
Then I wondered what else was in store!

The elements I found pretty basic (shapes etc. that you can paste on your layout). To make them yourself is something entirely different.

Filters are programs within the program to do something. (see below)
Textures (pictures that have some kind of texture in them like briks) are handy to give your grafics a 'real' look (in photoshop there is a standard filter called texturiser that you can use any texture (picture) with.
You can also make your own backgrounds from your photo's with the filter patternmaker.

Brushes can be made yourself (something for later)
If you use your paintbrush (in most programs) you can choose what kind of shape this brush actually is. These sizes etc. are called brushes.
You can also download brushsets from different sites.

In my case (photoshop) on allmost every topic there were a ton of tutorials to follow on this site and www.escrappers.com were plenty
Sometimes the search for the topic was started by a thread about brushes for example.

My advise don't overdo it!
Try the easy stuff first and see what great things you can do with that.
If you figure something out use that a few times before you start on something new (otherwise you'll forget like I did LOL)
If you are ready for something and can't find it on your own, ask around like you do now.

I'm looking forward to your first layouts

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Love to scrap

I have Hallmark Scrapbook Studio. The program is good for quick basic things, but there are a lot of draw backs. It does not recognize the transparent backgrounds of PNG files, so basically most of the elements that are available for download will have a box around them when you import them. The papers (backgrounds) should import fine. I use photoshop but recommend starting with either photoshop elements or photoimpact. Both are moderately priced and easier to learn than paint shop pro and photo shop CS for most. We have a lot of helpful members and design team that are glad to help the best that we can! -Ali

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Ali Folendore
Designer for Scrapbook-Bytes and Inspiration-Lane

I don't think we have a complied list anywhere with terms so my suggestion would be to post a quick quesiton on these boards if you find some terms you aren't familiar with! I'm sure many will answer your questions as quick as they can!

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Kristi McFadden
Proud to be a Design Team Member at SBB!
Looking for a Tutorial in DIP? PM me and I'll try to help!
"A creative mess is better than tidy idleness." -unknown.
Click here to view my LO attempts