I remember creating scrapbooks when I was a kid. I created my first 'Fan" scrapbook when the original TV series, Star Trek, hit our screens in Australia in 1967 and I fell for the character of Spock. I cut out every picture and article I could find and pasted them in my Star Trek Scrapbook along with my own scribblings about the show.

I also remember cutting and pasting various images to create scrapbook assignments for high school. Sadly, none of these exist today and I pretty much stopped scrapbooking after school.

Last year I found digital scrapbooking which has taken my art in a new direction. I've used the techniques, ideas and resources of digital scrapping in my latest collection "Art of the Square".

The artwork above, titled 'Create', was created using an image of a family of Arabian horses, a mare, foal and stallion, bought from a stock photo site, as the centre of the work. I wanted to make a piece with the theme of family, love, creation and life with the message that all things require time and effort to achieve the results we want.

To make the background to showcase my image I used scrapbook resources from Pixel Scrapper, a website of collective artists dedicated to creating resources for fellow artists to incorporate in their own projects. Most of the elements come from a mixed media kit by artist Melo Vrijhof and I particularly like the word art in this kit. There are over 50 individual elements as well as a number of Photoshop adjustments layers.

This second piece uses an image of a beautiful white Andalusian stallion as the centre piece of the work. The original image was purchased from Creative Market. The background, stamps, elements and word art are from another kit on Pixel Scrapper, this time by the artist Jessica Dunn. The 3d effect of the elements is created by using drop shadows.

The thread with bow and leaves is an example of the excellent quality of the cut files delivered as png files with transparent backgrounds ready to placed, resized and altered as required to suit the canvas being created. This image has only a few embellishments applied to showcase the main image of the horse. Elements were chosen to help tell the story, with the watch, string, heart shape along with the tag 'Memories' The colour of the background and embellishments was chosen to complement the horse and the pops of colour to add interest and balance.

Below is an image showing the various elements used to create Memories. Some of the elements have been recoloured, resized and some have been copied several times to create the background. You will notice that I removed the background of the original horse image and lightened him up a little. This is a great advantage of working with digital files. You can alter almost any aspect or property of your images to suit.

As you can see, digital scrapbooking uses the same basic principles of traditional scrapping, you start with a plain or decorated page and add your photos, text, and any embellishments that will add to the story of your chosen images. As the name suggests, all of the mentioned elements are digital files and, instead of using scissors and glue to put your page together, you need a software program to organise your digital elements. I use Adobe Photoshop CC but there are many different programs online that could be used instead.

If you would like an easy to follow, free guide to starting out in the art of digital scrapbooking then this article, digital scrapper, on one of the resource websites I use, Pixel Scrapper, is a great place to start.