do it all materials Photoshop (Adobe) • paper from “Chloe’s Closet Paperie” kit, elements from “KinderMagic” kit; brushes from “Summer SoNo,” “Magnificent,” “Avant Garde Hipster Plumes” all by Anna Aspnes (designerdigitals.com) • Klill Light TallX font

anna aspnes

elmendorf afb, alaska

UK native, Alaska resident and fluent German speaker Anna Aspnes brings a truly global perspective to digital scrapbooking. The daughter of a Royal Air Force officer, she spent her childhood moving between posts every few years before entering boarding school at age ten. After graduating from college with a major in German language and literature, her globe-trotting career continued: she taught English in Austria, worked as a military administrator in Germany and served as vice-president of an intelligence software company with branches in Germany and the US.

Since meeting and marrying her husband, an officer in the US Air Force, Anna has lived in Maryland, Japan and Alaska. She's a full-time mother of two children, four-year-old Ella and two-year-old Luke.

Anna began scrapbooking digitally nearly five years ago, with some prodding from her husband. “He went out and bought me Digital Image Pro 7,” she says. “I switched to the full version of Photoshop shortly afterwards, and I've never looked back.” After getting a tremendous positive response to one of her first albums, Anna decided to start designing and selling her own digital kits. Her design talents have been sought after by both digital and paper scrapbooking companies, and she was onne of the Featured Artists in Digital Scrapbooking's third special issue.

As her inspiration, Anna cites “nature, my children, TV, magazines, fashion...just life!” Her wide-ranging influences are apparent in her eclectic style—her layouts range from crisp graphic looks to grungy freestyle creations. Her passion for scrapbooking seems to have passed to the next generation as well: her daughter already has her own digital camera and loves taking pictures of everything “just like Mommy.”