computer - paper - scissors

i recently read an article about digital scrapbooking and why it's better than paper scrapping. the article raised good basic points we all know - cost, space, being able to crop at starbucks with only a laptop. but then the author started talking about how "lumpy" her pages would get, and how her albums were just so much neater when they were bound in neat book-like volumes of digital output and i thought - "well then what's the point of that???"

i mean let's face it. we all started cropping to satisfy that secret crafty craving. inking, sanding, tearing, gluing, glittering - come on! it's a grown up version of preschool! it's our excuse to get messy fingers, smudgy faces and mysterious marks on our clothes.

i've always laughed at the digital scrapbook embellishments. all that effort to make a digital button look like an actual button. just use a button! while i do see the environmental side of not using papers and plastics, the flip side is the use of chemicals and dyes to output and bind the digitally created albums. what's the lifespan of that CD used to archive your digital scrapbook, not to mention the chemical processes used to make the CD in the first place? the bottom line is everything we create impacts the environment in some way, it's just a matter of which way you can justify to yourself.

so for me, as much as i enjoy the cyber world of untouchable art, when it comes to my creative outlets i'm a paper junky at heart - the feel of it, that new paper smell, the sparkle of embedded glitter that a computer just can't reproduce. and don't forget the embellishments - buttons, flowers, brads, bling, and bits and pieces of memorabilia that tell a story by themselves. yes you can have all of those in a digital layout, but you can't touch it. it's only a picture of the real thing, missing the spirit of the thing itself.