Mixed media: Why your smartphone is perfect for scrapbooking
In 2004 Celine Navarro, a super creative mixed media artist and blogger based in Southern France, gave up her career as a photography lab expert to become a professional scrapbooker.
Having taught Mixed Media classes at a scrapbook store in Montreal, Quebec, she decided to turn her hobby into a job upon moving back to France. “Life has been crazy since then!” she says.
These days, Celine teaches scrapbooking classes everywhere in the world. “I get to work with amazing brands and to meet fantastic people!” she says. But what’s all this got to do with smartphones? Well, Celine is one of our Lumia Heroes, and she uses her Lumia 930 to capture and organize the memories for her scrapbooks.
From smartphone photos to scrapbook pages
For those of us still unfamiliar with scrapbooking, Celine defines it as “the creative art of taking books with blank pages and adding photos, memorabilia, journaling, and embellishments. The primary purpose of scrapbooking is to preserve memories for future generations, but a secondary purpose is to exercise your creativity.”
“Scrapbooking and memory keeping is all about the memories,” she says. “We tend not to print pictures nowadays, simply because we have them on hand, in our phones. But how rewarding, how fantastic it is to be able to look at a real photo book with you photos in it and share those moments with family and friends!”
The Lumia 930 is an essential tool in Celine’s work, particularly thanks to the fantastic camera. “I love my Lumia 930. I am never disappointed by the photo quality,” she says.
How to become a Lumia scrapbooker
For those who are keen to follow her example and start a scrapbook based on their Lumia memories, she offers the following advice:
1. Take lots of pictures. Edit them with Photoshop on your Lumia (yes, it’s free, too!)
2. Storyteller helps you get track of when and where your photos were taken. Just grab your phone when you print your pictures to scrapbook them in the right place, at the right time. This app was made for scrapbookers and memory keepers! It does all the organising for you, isn’t that amazing?
3. Have fun!
Quality pics for a quality audience
Celine Navarro got her first Lumia when she was invited by the Connects team to test a Lumia 920, back in June 2013. Now she uses her Lumia 930 for 99,9% of her social media photos.
“I’ve got my Lumia with me all the time,” says Celine. “I take photos, I edit them and upload them directly on my Lumia. In my job, a high visual standard is absolutely necessary if you want to catch the attention of other creative women. If your photos are ugly or badly edited, they won’t like them and they won’t follow you. On the other hand, if you have high standard visual content, people will like and follow you.”
Celine’s photos have certainly convinced people of her talents. Her scrapbooking sessions are selling out everywhere, and she has over 6,100 followers on Instagram.
Ice(land), ice(land) baby
The five apps on her Lumia Celine could not live without are Nokia Camera, Instagram, Storyteller, Photoshop Express and Skype… not surprisingly, they all have something to do with making, recording and keeping your memories. But there’s something else that makes her Lumia 930 particularly special for her, too: the customisable live tiles. Celine loves to tailor her start screen to match her mood. Perhaps it’s a bit like a portable electronic scrapbook!
So, what’s on it at the moment, we asked.
“I’ve been obsessed with Iceland lately. I really want to go this year, take thousands of photos and document it, on my blog and on paper. So everything on my phone has Iceland photos now! Even on my homescreen!”
We hope Celine makes it there and we’re confident there’ll be an amazing scrapbook created out of her memories of the trip! Have you used your Lumia for putting together a scrapbook? If so, we’d love to hear all about, and even better, see some photos. The comments section is your canvas – we’re all eyes and ears!