News and Events
'MemoryMixer' Scrapbooking with Ease
Published: Wednesday, May 17, 2006
by Connie Keenan
One of the perks of writing for a community newspaper is that I have the opportunity to "test" new products. Some are real duds, others not so unusual that it needs to take up paper space, but once in awhile a product is so clever you just have to share the news.
MemoryMixer by Lasting Impressions for Paper (www.memorymixer.com) is the first scrapbook program, that I've seen, for those who have given up the idea of ever being "crafty."
I love to create things. I usually buy kits, but no matter how hard I try, they come out looking like something well, I would make.
I've tried traditional scrap book projects in the past. But unless one has the time, patience and the manual eye-hand coordination of a scissor artist, those pieces of paper, photos, glue and ribbons wind up collecting dust in some far away closet.
But here is a project I CAN do well. The discs take little shelf space and I have memories to pass on to my grandkids.
Now bear in mind, if you really want to create in paper, MemoryMixer can be used to create the usual paper layout styles, but it also allows the user to incorporate multimedia features, creating CD and DVD slide shows with music, narration, movies and even Web hotspots. Layouts can be output for home printing, or for uploading to commercial book and photo printing. How neat is that! And it's easy to use.
MemoryMixer stores layouts in "albums" which can have one or more layout pages. Open the program and you will see this dialog : choose Mix to start a new album, Open to open an existing album you've already saved, Shop to search online for additional products and Visit to go directly to the MemoryMixer site.
One little precaution though, if you think you'll be able to edit images like you do in PhotoShop you'll be unhappy.
MemoryMixer is NOT a full-featured image editor. It's more of a page layout tool, with multimedia interactivity added. Exactly what this not-so-crafty type needs.
In less than an hour, MemoryMixer helped me assemble pages with web links to my family's personal pages and downloaded photos from my own files and of course, I just HAD to add music.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll have one ready in time for Christmas. And once I have one disk finished it's nothing to make copies and then I'll have gifts for every member of my family!
MemoryMixer can be purchased online at: www.memorymixer.com for $69.95. You may also click the retailers selling the product in nearby cities.
