Or should they?

There's been a line of thought that digital pages need to look like paper ones to be good scrapbook pages. I know it's fun when someone reaches out to touch my printed pages, but that's not the be-all and end-all of digital scrapbooking.

The main way digital scrapbookers get their pages to look like paper if by buying quality supplies, adding shadows to make objects look three dimensional, and using embellishments in a similar way to paper scrapbookers. Instead of spending hours working on your shadows (shadows, and more shadows), paper piecing and 'paper' techniques you can tell more stories by freeing yourself from those expectations.

The truth is, photos + words = scrapbook.

If you aren't going to be making your pages look like paper then what do you do instead?

There's a huge array of styles and techniques to try.

Blended

Championed by designers such as Anna Aspnes, the blended digital look is a distinctive look that would be difficult to achieve in paper.

Here I took a movie poster as inspiration, blended my photo and added some glows to my type. Not an easy effect to achieve on paper.

Why not have fun combining the paper and blended looks? I often do this in my pages.

Extracted

Do you fancy fussy cutting photos? Me neither! I used to get fussy about how I extracted my images, but now I do it just for fun! Here's how.

As a paper scrapbooker, you probably wouldn't want to spend the money on an enlargement to cut it up. But you can do it for no extra cost on a digital page.

Enlargements

Speaking of enlargements - why not go all out and have a full 12x12 photo? Here's how I achieved this look.

I can even 'stitch' on an enlargement without fear.

With digital scrapbooking there's no extra cost for a larger photo! On the other hand, if small photos are more your style, you can use programs, actions or templates to make a pile of photos into a collage. I guess you could create this in paper, but...

Dimensional

Digital scrapbook pages aren't restricted to what will fit inside a page protector. In paper scrapbook pages you couldn't include 3-dimensional object like these.

Sometimes I just pile on the embellishments too! It doesn't cost a cent more.

Memorabilia

On my digital pages, I've even been known to recolor memorabilia to make it suit the pages I create. Don't feel limited to 'reality'. It doesn't take away from the story to change a fluoro yellow sticker to look a little more tasteful.

You can even take three-dimensional memorabilia to add that too.

Pseudo Paper

I don't mess around with fussing about my shadows, but I do still like a paper look to my pages. I like to think of them as 'pseudo paper' so I can always add a few aspects of the techniques I demonstrated above. It keeps me interested, and it keeps me from going down a rabbit hole of Photoshop tweaks. Of course, I still have the freedom to spend half an hour tweaking my layouts if I want to, and sometimes I do! If you digi scrap, do you try to create pages to look like paper layouts? Have you ever tried something different?

PS  If you want to ditch a few more shoulds from your scrapbooking you can get more help here!