Its been 13+ years ... I wonder if anyone remembers me :)

M

MizAmyLou

New member
Hey Ya'll. My name is Amy Thornton, used to be Amy Carey when I was here years and years ago. Once upon a time I o swas a sugarbabe here and loved every minute. I used to be a work at home mom, doing medical transcription. In November 2013 my husband died in Saudi Arabia while he was doing a work contract there. Needless to say I fell off the scrapbook world. I felt like I had fallen off the earth. By that time my kids were 16 and 14. I didn't know what to with myself. We had to move, a considerable downsizing. We moved from our brick and mortar house to a doublewide that I was able to buy with his "death benefit". took every penny of it. Then I started working in the audiology department of an ENT office so I had no time to scrap. Fast forward a lot of time, I am now a grandmother of three, I am "retired" medically and am right now recovering from knee replacement surgery. I was in my late 20s early 30s when I started digi scrapping and now I want to come back and I don't know HOW. I have Photoshop CS3. Cant afford to upgrade. And I have many years of sweet shoppe designs to play with, but if I buy new ones now will I be able to play with them in CS3? And will ya'll be able to tolerate lots and lots of questions because I feel like I know nothing. I got my software installed and installed a few actions but I dont even know where to start. i also do bible journaling now and I want to make pretty designs to go into my bible too. I've seen what others have been doing, maybe with AI but I couldn't help think what beautiful things I could do with digital scrapbook designs ... if I can relearn. Can anyone point me to where the best place to relearn would be?
 
Hi Amy and welcome back! I've been digiscrapping since 2007, so I'm sure at some point in time I interacted with you. Did you have the same user name? I am also known throughout the community as gonewiththewind.

While you had some huge setbacks and hard times, it sounds like you worked hard to make it through it all. And now you have three grandchildren! Woo-Hoo! Oh, and the retirement. I'm sorry it's a medical retirement, but now you have some down time to play!

I use Photoshop Creative Cloud (subscription), but started out with Photoshop Elements. I know there have to be others here that are using older versions of Photoshop and who would be happy to help you with specific questions as it relates to CS3.

As far as getting a refresher for digiscrapping, check the banner at the top of the site marked TUTORIALS and you will find a treasure trove of all kinds of tutorials. Some of these tutorials are older, so you may get lucky and find tutorials that specifically use CS3.

Again, welcome back, and have a ton of fun creating again!
 
Hi Amy, I'm soooo proud of you! I'm sending you a BIG HUG TOO! I'm thrilled you are coming back to scrapbooking - it can be sooo therapeutic! I'm here to help in any way I can if you ever want to DM me. Your story is worth documenting!
 
Welcome back, Amy! 💜
You are always welcome to ask as many questions as you have in this sweet community. We are here to help, if we can. Please don't shy away.
 
Hi Amy, I definitely remember you, welcome back! Don't sweat about not knowing everytyhing about your program. I highly recommend using the free version of chatGPT, Copilot or Claude to ask questions when you get stumped. Of couse, we have lot of tutorials too ❤️
 
My goodness, what a journey you have been on. I think some of us here can relate to losing your husband and feeling like you have lost yourself, so I am glad you are at a place where you can start doing things just because you enjoy them.

I can't imagine any reason why you could not use our current designs in CS3. We are still creating everything as jpegs and pngs, which should work perfectly fine in CS3. And honestly, since you are going to be using your old program, I am not sure you will have to "relearn" much. It will probably be like riding a bike after a long time. You may wobble as you get going, but before you know it, you will be steady, moving forward and enjoying the ride.
 
Hi Amy! Welcome back! I'm so sorry all you have went through, but you have persevered! I would start with templates and pretty sure they should work in your program still. Then you can just replace items on the template with your papers and elements from the kit and your photos. For bible journaling, @KBcreative might be able to help you with that. I know she is familiar with it, just not sure if with digital supplies? But welcome and I'm sure any of us would be more than happy to help with any of your questions. :)
 
Hey Amy! Welcome back!! What a journey you've been on.

Everyone has given you some great advice so far, but I just wanted to say hello and reacquaint you with some of the awesome stuff we've got going on in the store and forum these days!

As far as the technical stuff goes, we've all been rusty with our skills from time to time... there's no such thing as a dumb question, so ask away!

Sometimes I like a good challenge to get myself back into the flow of things. We have a new challenge system this year that's a lot of fun. You can check out the details here: Connect & Create Challenges. June challenges should be up any minute now!

If you're a reader and interested in the social side of things, we have a pretty active book club these days!

Since a lot of the big galleries that we used to frequent have closed, a lot of us are over on Instagram sharing layouts now.

And if you ever want to hang out in real time, I host monthly scraps on YouTube. It's a lot of fun to get to know our fellow scrappers, scrap along with me, or learn some new Photoshop tricks and tips.

Can't wait to see your layouts gracing the gallery soon!

Oh! And if you're looking for an awesome freebie to get you back into the swing of things... check out this beauty!!

 
Hi Amy! Of course we remember you!! So glad you found your way back to us after such a long journey in your life ♥️

We havent updated our tutorials in FOR-EVER so I think lots of them were in fact created in CS3 back in the day! Everything is still just standard .jpg and .png format, so you'll have no problem using what's new and I bet once you start playing in Photoshop, it'll all come back to you bit by bit!

Welcome back!!

R
 
@MizAmyLou you talked about making some designs in your bible. I signed up for a week of workshop (free) and there is a class for that type of stuff. It’s today at 10am EDT. If you miss it you have 24 hours to watch it for free.
They have a bunch of other really cool art projects.

www.workshopweek.co

Schedule 2026 — Workshop Week

www.workshopweek.co www.workshopweek.co
 
Welcome back, Amy.
Feel free to ask any question you want. I'm pretty sure there's always someone here who can help out.
Can't wait to see your pages pop up in the gallery.
 
MizAmyLou said:
Hey Ya'll. My name is Amy Thornton, used to be Amy Carey when I was here years and years ago. Once upon a time I o swas a sugarbabe here and loved every minute. I used to be a work at home mom, doing medical transcription. In November 2013 my husband died in Saudi Arabia while he was doing a work contract there. Needless to say I fell off the scrapbook world. I felt like I had fallen off the earth. By that time my kids were 16 and 14. I didn't know what to with myself. We had to move, a considerable downsizing. We moved from our brick and mortar house to a doublewide that I was able to buy with his "death benefit". took every penny of it. Then I started working in the audiology department of an ENT office so I had no time to scrap. Fast forward a lot of time, I am now a grandmother of three, I am "retired" medically and am right now recovering from knee replacement surgery. I was in my late 20s early 30s when I started digi scrapping and now I want to come back and I don't know HOW. I have Photoshop CS3. Cant afford to upgrade. And I have many years of sweet shoppe designs to play with, but if I buy new ones now will I be able to play with them in CS3? And will ya'll be able to tolerate lots and lots of questions because I feel like I know nothing. I got my software installed and installed a few actions but I dont even know where to start. i also do bible journaling now and I want to make pretty designs to go into my bible too. I've seen what others have been doing, maybe with AI but I couldn't help think what beautiful things I could do with digital scrapbook designs ... if I can relearn. Can anyone point me to where the best place to relearn would be?
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Hi Amy! I'm sorry you've had a tough journey and I hope coming back to digiscrap will be fulfilling.
I thought I'd offer an option for software for you. I scrap and have always scrapped on photo editing software called The Gimp. I started on it in 2008. It's open source software, so it's created and improved constantly and it's completely free. There are a few things that might no be compatible with it (like photoshop specific actions for styles) although to be honest they might even work, I haven't tried in many years... But other than that, you can open .psd photoshop format templates and any and all .jpg and .png and there are free tutorials on the Gimp website and on YouTube.
You can download it here: https://www.gimp.org/
Just an option for you if you want more recent software without having to pay anything :)

Either way, enjoy rediscovering this awesome hobby!
 
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