Start Digital Scrapbook Classes: Which Classes Should You Take First?
Start digital scrapbook classes: If you are new to digital scrapbooking and wondering exactly where to begin, you are absolutely in the right place. With so many memory-keeping options available — photo editing, image blending, photo book design, storytelling, and more — it can feel genuinely overwhelming at first. That is completely normal, and the good news is you do not need to learn everything at once.
In fact, a simple, structured path is all you need to build real confidence, develop your skills step by step, and — most importantly — actually finish your memory-keeping projects. This guide will walk you through every class available at Anna Aspnes Designs, explain clearly what each one teaches, and help you decide exactly where to start digital scrapbook classes
Whether your goal is to create beautiful photo books, master artistic blending techniques, or simply become more efficient at preserving your memories, there is a clear path forward for you here.
Start digital scrapbook classes (No Cost, No Risk)
Before investing in a paid class, it makes sense to explore the free options first. Fortunately, Anna Aspnes Designs offers two excellent free starting points that require absolutely nothing from you except a little curiosity.
🆓 FREE Create Your First Layout Class
A free class teaching you the basic foundations of getting started with digital scrapbooking in Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Finally, understand how to navigate each program, make a new blank page, and then use the provided bonus digital scrapbooking supplies to build your first digital memory-keeping page. A great way to start digital scrapbook classes.
Best for: Complete beginners who want a risk-free first step. | Software: Free trial of Adobe Photoshop & Photoshop Elements
🆓 Free Affinity Studio Video Class
If you prefer to use the free Affinity Studio software rather than a paid Adobe subscription, this video class shows you how to get started with digital scrapbooking inside that program. It is a wonderful, cost-effective alternative that still delivers beautiful results.
Best for: Beginners who want to avoid Adobe subscription costs. | Software: Affinity Studio (free)
Once you have explored the free classes, you are ready to choose a direction. Below, you will find four clear paths — organized by goal — so you can find the one that fits you best.
YOUR DIGITAL SCRAPBOOK CLASS ROADMAP AT A GLANCE
Photo Book Classes — Create finished, story-driven photo books from start to finish
Photo Blending Classes — Master artistic photo blending with ArtPlay Collections
Essential Skills Classes — Organization, design principles, page techniques, and more
Photo Extraction Classes — Advanced creative control by removing subjects from backgrounds
Path 1: Digital Scrapbook Photo Book Classes — Create Meaningful Albums From Start to Finish
If your primary goal is to turn your photos into finished, meaningful photo books — rather than focus on artistic techniques first — then this is the perfect place to begin. Photo book classes give you far more than just technical skills. They give you a clear, repeatable process for transforming forgotten photos into complete, story-driven albums that you will actually hold in your hands.
Instead of feeling overwhelmed by thousands of unorganized images or paralyzed by unfinished pages, these classes help you simplify your thinking, organize your ideas, and create cohesive albums where your memories and stories always remain the focus. Here, therefore, is the recommended order for working through the photo book series:
Storytelling Digital Scrapbook Class: Best Creative Photo Books
What you will learn: This is the ideal starting point for the photo book path. You will learn a complete, step-by-step approach to creating a digital scrapbook photo book. The journey goes from organizing your ideas all the way through to a finished, printed album. More than just techniques, this class teaches you to think like a storyteller. Every page you create will feel meaningful and intentional.
Why it matters: Most beginners get stuck because they do not have a clear process. This guidance gives you exactly that — a proven structure, so you always know what to do next.
STEP 2
Digital Scrapbook Photo Editing: Enhance and Improve
What you will learn: Strong photo books begin with strong photos. In this course of lessons, you will learn how to enhance the clarity, color, and contrast of your images. The goal is results that feel natural — but elevate your photos to ‘wow factor’ status. Along the way, you’ll also learn how to remove the backgrounds from your photos to isolate the subject. Furthermore, this class will help you build a repeatable editing workflow to ensure quick photo editing every single time.
Why it matters: Even a simple layout looks stunning when the photos are beautifully edited and made to shine in your memory-keeping pages.
STEP 3
Simplify Digital Scrapbooking Albums: Memory-Keeping Made Easy
What you will learn: These lessons tackle two big challenges: photo books that take too long and decision fatigue. Specifically, you will have practical strategies to streamline your workflow, reduce the overwhelm of too many choices, and consistently finish more pages with far less stress.
Why it matters: Finishing projects feels far better than having dozens of half-started ones— Speed and consistency matter.
STEP 4
Tell Stories With Photos: Storytelling Photography
What you will learn: Better memory-keeping starts before you even sit down at your computer. These lessons teach you how to take fewer, more intentional photos — captured with storytelling in mind. As a result, your photo albums become far easier and more natural to create
Why it matters: When your photos tell a story from the moment they are taken, putting together a meaningful album becomes a joy rather than a chore.
STEP 5
Digital Scrapbook Photo Books: Advanced Template Design
What you will learn: Once you have completed your first photo book, this advanced class takes your skills further. You will know how to adapt templates to fit your photos and stories, create new page designs, and reuse your supplies more efficiently. The result is greater creative flexibility across all your future photo book projects.
Why it matters: Customizing templates for each photo book project dramatically speeds up your workflow and makes your album more personalized while maintaining a cohesive look
STEP 6
SO Creative Photobook Project
What you will learn: A complete, more advanced guided photo book project. It walks you through elevated creative techniques and photo effects to grow your artistry skills — and add a lot more fun to your process. It is the ideal next step for taking your Photoshop skills further. Structure, cohesion, and photo book completion are all built in.
Why it matters: Sometimes the best way to learn is simply to do, and this project-based workshop gives you everything you need to grow your scrapbooking skills and create something spectacular.
Path 2: Digital Scrapbook Blending Classes — Master the Art of Photo Blending
If the artistic side of digital scrapbooking excites you — blending your photos seamlessly into layouts using ArtPlay Collection supplies, brushes, and masks — then the blending class series is where you will want to spend your time. These classes are specifically designed to teach you how to use Photoshop brushes and layer masks to create stunning, painterly digital scrapbook pages where your photos feel fully integrated with the design around them.
Importantly, this path is progressive. Each one in the series builds directly on the one before it, so it is highly recommended that you work through them in order. Here is how the blending series breaks down:
BLEND 1 — Free
FREE Basic Brushes Guidance
Start here at no cost. You will master the essentials of loading, using, and saving Photoshop brushes — the core tool behind all blending techniques. This free option is available for both Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, so regardless of which software you use, you are covered.
BLEND 2
Digital Scrapbooking Design with Photoshop Brushes
Taking the next step from the free class, this course covers the fundamental design principles and element properties of digital scrapbooking using Photoshop Brushes. You will understand how brush properties affect your layouts. From there, there will be guidance on how to create cohesive, artistically blended pages in both Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements
BLEND 3
Masterly Brushes: Modify Clipping Masks
Now that you understand how to use brushes, these demonstrations show how to use them to modify designer clipping masks with faded edges to work better with your photos. You will learn how to edit any clipping mask and bring clarity back to your blended images. After all, blending should elevate your memories — not obscure the faces of the people in them
BLEND 4
Masterly Brushes: Design Custom Clipping Masks
Having learned about brushes and design principles, you are now ready to build your own clipping masks — customized to your photos. Through hands-on practice, you will learn how to place the pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle, to create the perfectly blended photo every time. A limited commercial-use license is also available for designers who want to sell the masks they create.
BLEND 5
Masterly Brushes: Master Custom Blending
Building on your brush and design skills, this course shows you how to use layer masks to blend a photo into a digital scrapbooking background. You will learn all the tips and tricks to make this process seamless — perfecting, refining, and improving your blending results every time.
BLEND 6
Masterly Brushes: Elevate with Adjustment Layers
Adjustment layers are the secret weapon of advanced digital scrapbookers. In this class, you will learn how to use them to improve color, contrast, and the overall coordination of photos and the digital scrapbooking supplies — taking your blended layouts to the next level.
BLEND 7
Cut, Blend, and Align Digital Scrapbook Layout Design
A practical class that teaches you 3 digital scrapbooking techniques around a single digital scrapbooking design. You will learn how to cut, blend, and precisely align elements in either Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. This 3-simple-techniques approach is a great way for a beginner to build skills and confidence while making a cohesive page.
BLEND 8
Digital Scrapbook Lighting Techniques: Magically Brighten
Light transforms everything. This class teaches you how to use digital lighting techniques to brighten and enhance your blended photos within your scrapbook layouts — creating pages that feel magical, warm, and alive.
BLEND 9
Creative Artistry With ToolSets
ToolSets are a signature Anna Aspnes Designs product. Understand how to use brushes — paint splatters, blending brushes, and paper textures — with more creativity, confidence, and ease. You’ll learn how to add texture, depth, and subtle artistic embellishment with a big impact to your digital scrapbooking pages.
BLEND 10
ArtPlay Starts
A great advanced companion class for anyone working with ArtPlay Collections and looking for a series of inspiring entry points into starting a new digital scrapbook page design. It’s not easy to be stared down by a big white blank canvas. This class will help by showing lots of different ways to start a page using various digital scrapbooking supplies and technique-driven approaches. If you have been in a creative rut, then this class will spark some new inspiration into your digital scrapbooking.
Path 3: Essential Digital Scrapbooking Skills — Build a Strong Foundation
In addition to the photo book and blending paths, there is a collection of stand-alone classes that build essential, transferable digital scrapbooking skills. These classes work beautifully alongside any other path — in fact, many students find that taking one or two of these early on makes everything else click into place much more quickly. Here are the must-have foundational classes:
ESSENTIAL 1 — Start Here
Organize Digital Scrapbook Supplies: Best 101 Approach
Whether you have been collecting digital kits for years or you are just getting started, this class is highly recommended as an early priority. It guides you step by step through building a digital organization system that genuinely serves your workflow and creative preferences. Practicality meets the psychology of how creative people actually work best.
ESSENTIAL 2
Best Digital Scrapbooking Skills: 10 Flat to Fabulous Tutorials
Ten focused tutorials that show you how to take flat, basic digital scrapbook pages and catapult them to a higher level of artistic design appeal. You’ll use a variety of top 10 Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements techniques to make the magic happen in your digital scrapbooking pages. If your pages currently feel a little boring or unfinished, this class will be the one to make the big difference.
ESSENTIAL 3
Realistic Scrapbook Drop Shadows: Master Dimension
Drop shadows are one of the most overlooked yet impactful skills in digital scrapbooking. This class teaches you how to add genuine depth, realism, and dimension to your pages using layer style tools and techniques in both Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. First, you will learn how shadows behave in the real world. Then you will discover all the ways to apply drop and cast shadows to elements in your pages. The difference is immediate — and this class shows you exactly how to get it right.
ESSENTIAL 4
Layer Digital Scrapbook Elements: How to Tuck and Weave
Layering is what makes digital scrapbook pages feel rich, textured, and professionally designed. In this class, you will learn the tuck-and-weave technique — how to layer elements in a way that makes your digital elements look real and come to life, adding visual interest and depth to every page you create.
ESSENTIAL 5
Easy Digital Scrapbook Embellishments: Make Easy Clusters
Quick to build and endlessly satisfying, embellishment clusters are one of the defining features of beautifully designed pages — and this class shows you exactly how to create them. Use digital scrapbooking supplies you likely already have on hand. You will come away with an invaluable cheat sheet for adding visual complexity to every story you tell.
ESSENTIAL 6
Mastering Visual Triangles in Layout Design
Knowing how to guide the viewer’s eye is one of the most valuable design skills you can develop. This series introduces visual triangles — a simple but powerful composition tool. Apply it and your layouts will immediately feel more balanced, dynamic, and professional.
ESSENTIAL 7
Shapes, Styles, and Repetition (Photoshop & Photoshop Elements)
Another helpful trio of digital scrapbooking techniques is shared in one digital scrapbooking page design. Learn how to use repetition, work with Photoshop custom shapes, and wield layer styles to improve your digital scrapbooking pages. Available in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements versions.
ESSENTIAL 8
Scrapbook More Creatively
Feeling stuck in a creative rut is something every digital scrapbooker experiences eventually. This advanced class gives you practical, actionable strategies to break out of repetitive habits, experiment with new ideas, and approach your memory-keeping with genuine freshness and enthusiasm.
ESSENTIAL 9
The Multiplier Blueprint
Learn how to multiply your creative inspiration so that you always have a clear idea of what to create next. This advanced class is especially helpful when you have the supplies and the desire to scrapbook but simply cannot decide where to begin — a common challenge for digital scrapbookers at every level.
Path 4: Photo Extraction Classes — Advanced Creative Possibilities
Once you feel comfortable with the fundamentals of digital scrapbooking, photo extraction opens up a whole new level of creative freedom. Extraction is the process of removing a subject from its background — allowing you to place your photos into entirely new environments, integrate them more seamlessly with ArtPlay digital scrapbook supplies, and create highly customized, story-driven designs that feel truly unique.
This is, therefore, an advanced skill — and it is recommended that you have a solid grounding in blending and basic page design before diving in. However, when you are ready, the photo extraction series is a genuinely powerful next step. Anna offers in-depth extraction classes in both Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and the series is organized progressively across three levels:
EXTRACTION 1 — Foundation
Selections, Masking & Photo Extractions Part 1 (Photoshop & Photoshop Elements)
The foundational class in the extraction series. Here you will learn the essential tools and techniques for making accurate selections in either Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Start here — and work through the series for the best results.
EXTRACTION 2 — Intermediate
Selections, Masking & Photo Extractions Part 2 (Photoshop & Photoshop Elements)
Building on Part 1, this intermediate class introduces more refined selection and masking techniques — allowing you to tackle more complex extractions with greater confidence and precision.
EXTRACTION 3 — Advanced (Photoshop)
Selections, Masking & Photo Extractions Part 3 (Photoshop) REPLAY
The most advanced class in the extraction series, available for Adobe Photoshop. By this point, you have the full toolkit to extract virtually any subject from any background. Very few digital scrapbookers ever reach this level of creative freedom
→ See the Full Extraction Series
Bonus: Start Digital Scrapbook Classes with Project-Based and Annual Classes
In addition to the four main paths above, Anna also offers immersive, project-based classes that combine learning with creating a complete, finished project. These are particularly rewarding because, by the time you finish, you have both new skills and a completed album to show for it.
aA Project REPLAY
A complete guided scrapbooking project with lessons, prompts, and a finished album as the goal.
aA Travel Project
A travel-themed guided project — perfect if you have a specific trip or adventure you want to document beautifully.
The Simplest Possible Start to Digital Scrapbook Classes Path for Absolute Beginners
If you have read through all of this and still feel unsure about where to begin your digital scrapbook classes journey, that is completely understandable. Here, therefore, is the simplest possible recommended starting sequence — a clear, step-by-step roadmap that will get you creating meaningful digital scrapbook pages as quickly as possible:
- Start with the FREE Create Your First Layout class — no cost, no commitment, just a gentle introduction.
- Take Organize Digital Scrapbook Supplies — set yourself up with a system that makes everything easier from day one.
- Move to Storytelling Digital Scrapbook Class: Best Creative Photo Books — learn the complete, simple photo book process from start to finish.
- Enhance your images with Digital Scrapbook Photo Editing — because better photos make better pages.
- Add artistry with the Blending Classes — when you feel ready to take your pages to a more artistic level.
- Explore Photo Extractions — when you want even more creative control over how your photos are used.
Remember: You do not have to follow this sequence rigidly. Ultimately, the best class to take next is always the one that excites you most right now. Start simple, build momentum, and let your photos and stories lead the way.
Frequently Asked Questions To Start Digital Scrapbook Classes
Which digital scrapbook class should a complete beginner take first?
The best first step is the FREE Create Your First Layout class. It introduces you to the foundations, and you can start digital scrapbook classes at absolutely no cost. From there, the Organize Digital Scrapbook Supplies class and the Storytelling Digital Scrapbook photo book class are the most logical next steps.
Do I need Adobe Photoshop to start digital scrapbook classes?
Not necessarily. Most start digital scrapbook classes at Anna Aspnes Designs are available for both Adobe Photoshop and the more affordable Adobe Photoshop Elements. Additionally, a free introductory class exists for the completely free Affinity Studio software, meaning there is a viable path regardless of your software budget.
What is the difference between the photo book classes and the blending classes?
The photo book classes focus on storytelling, workflow, organization, and creating finished albums from beginning to end. The blending classes, on the other hand, focus on the artistic techniques of combining photos with digital scrapbooking supplies using brushes, masks, and adjustment layers. Both paths are valuable — and many students eventually explore both.
What is photo extraction in digital scrapbooking?
Photo extraction is the process of removing a subject — such as a person, pet, or object — from its original background. From there, you can place that subject into a new environment on your page. You can also blend it more seamlessly with your supplies and create far more customized layouts. It is an advanced skill, and Anna’s three-part extraction series teaches it progressively as you start digital scrapbook classes.
Can I mix and match classes from different paths?
Absolutely — and in fact, many students do exactly that. For example, you might work through the photo book series first to complete a finished project, and then start the blending series to add more artistry to future albums. The classes are designed to complement each other, so mixing and matching almost always produces the best creative results.
Ready to Begin Your Digital Scrapbook Journey?
Whether you want to create meaningful photo books, master the art of photo blending, or simply become more organized and efficient in your memory-keeping, there is a class here that is the perfect fit for you. Start with the free class, explore the store, and take that first step — your photos and stories deserve to be preserved beautifully.
Browse All Digital Scrapbook Classes →
Let’s make the magic happen. ❤️
