My Memories Suite

My Memories Suite is a digital scrapbooking software that you can download instantly.  I was so excited for the opportunity to review this product.  I had an older digital scrapbooking program on my desktop computer, but have misplaced the disk and was unable to transfer the program to my laptop.  I’ve been wanting to buy a new program, but wasn’t sure what all was available and what different programs might have to offer; so this came to me at just the right time. 

When you purchase and download My Memories Suite software to your computer, you’ll instantly have about 30 Designer Templates, 1,500 embellishments, and about 1,300 digital papers that come with the software.  That’s plenty to get you started at creating some really fun scrapbook projects!  If you get bored with these, though, you can go to the Design Studio at the My Memories Suite website and click on “Free Downloads” to add more fun and variety to your software.  (These freebies change periodically, so you’ll want to bookmark the page and check back often!)

Also available in the Design Studio are plenty of additional designs that you can purchase to add to your collection. You can search by Designer too, if you are familiar with the various designers.  I found some very cute designs here and found myself unable to resist purchasing a few. :)

My scrapbook hobby was quickly put on hold when my son Ian arrived in 2006.  Since that time, I’ve been intrigued by digital scrapbooking, which appeals to me because you don’t need all the extra space and storage for all those scrapbooking supplies (and, believe me, I have a TON!)  Having all of that “stuff” stored on my little laptop – that’s exciting to me! 

With My Memories Suite, I can do just that.  The software is set up so that you can start an album and save it, then go in and add to it whenever you have time.  Albums are available in various sizes – just like the ones you’d buy “in real life”.  Once you’ve completed an album, you have the choice to print it out at home or have it printed and bound elsewhere. 

I haven’t exactly gotten that far, yet, though I have been playing around with the software!  I had previously purchased a digital scrapbooking kit from another website – I thought it would make a great blog set, but had no idea how to go about doing that for myself.  I was able to create this header for my blog using My Memories Suite:

One of these days, I’ll figure out how to change my backgrounds, etc. and get this up there!  For now, though, I’m just pretty excited to have created it.  What do you think?

I don’t know about you, but I learn best by doing and a program like this is best figured out by simply experimenting and playing around with it.  Because I don’t have a lot of spare time, I wasn’t really interested in creating full albums at this time; but rather I wanted to try my hand at creating buttons for my blog, etc.  With my old software, in addition to album selections and/or paper sizes, I had the option of creating various envelopes and labels.  Those were the things I would choose to create blog headers and/or buttons for my sidebar.  I didn’t see any such option with My Memories Suite.  So, I created the header above using an horizontal album page; then, when I went to save it, I resized it.  It worked great! 

There are some other aspects of this program that are so much fun that I have to share - - -

• I touched on this above, but I love that you can incorporate your own digital scrapbooking components from other websites into these projects.  That makes the possibilities virtually endless because there is so much available out there.  Just do a search for “digital scrapbooking” and you’ll spend days going through all the links!
• The Word Art Designer Feature is so fun!  There are so many different things you can do with it and I can totally see my 10-year-old having a ball with this feature!
• There are tons of embellishments.  You can create shadows behind them, flip or mirror image them, rotate them, and add opacity.  Again, it’s just fun to play around with them to see all that you can do. 
• I did not even take time to experiment with the video & multimedia or music & narration sections, but they are there!  I can just imagine the possibilities with these features!

If you’re a scrapbooker who is looking to try digital scrapbooking, I’d highly recommend My Memories Suite software.  It sells for just $39.95 and you can download it instantly – no sitting and waiting for the UPS man to arrive!  (You can choose to have it shipped, but if you’re impatient like I am, I wouldn’t recommend that option.)

It’s so easy to use; which, for this busy mom, is a huge plus!  It would be perfect for a beginner too. If you decide to purchase My Memories Suite for yourself, I’ve got a 20% off code that you can use in the Design Shop to add to your collection!  Just enter code MamaBuzz20 and buy away! 

What’s next on my project list?  I plan to use My Memories Suite to do the field trip sections of my girls’ homeschool portfolios.  I am going to create 2 8 1/2 x 11” albums and add to them throughout the school year.  Then, I hope to have them printed somewhere on real photo paper and insert them into our portfolios.  In the past, we’ve done something similar, but printed them individually on regular printer paper – I think this will not only be much more professional, but also make the portfolios a more precious keepsake to look back on in future years.

You can follow My Memories Suite on Twitter and Facebook.  They also have a blog that contains some tutorials which were very helpful to me. :)  Check them out!

NOTE: This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by StoryRock, Inc. for this review.