If you were going to reorganize.....

[littlekiwi]

Firstly to note I have never been 100% satisfied with my organizing style so its never been completed plus I've changed which program I use a few times as well so I'm starting over.

At first I was doing quite an in-depth tagging method because that's how I naturally think but I realized very soon after that given the size of my stash (over 200gb) that it wasn't feasible to stick with long term so I started to think more generic in terms of my organizing but I then didn't feel I had a great handle on what I had so I'm left with an unorganized mess.

What I want to get out of it is
a) an organized stash
b) the ability to scrap from said stash
c) something that is relatively easy to maintain as I often go in spurts of downloading/organizing leading to it taking forever to do which then leads me to stop doing it

Any suggestions on how to actually do it that will work long term as I feel like this has been eluding me since the day I started scrapping quite honestly. The one thing I don't need help on is which program to use - I've decided to go back to ACDSee, it just makes more sense for me

 

[umyesh]

I have never used ACDSee so I’m probably no help but I just organize by designer and keep all items from one kit together (papers, elements and alphas).

 

[littlekiwi]

I have never used ACDSee so I’m probably no help but I just organize by designer and keep all items from one kit together (papers, elements and alphas).

I do that within my file/folder structure anyway but without further “tagging” or organising I just don’t know what’s in my stash at all.

 

[umyesh]

I do that within my file/folder structure anyway but without further “tagging” or organising I just don’t know what’s in my stash at all.

Yeah I feel the same. I like to randomly look through my Visual Order History in the store because it helps me remember all the goodies I’ve forgotten.

 

[Cherylndesigns]

I don't use it either and have never really "re-organized". If I did, it would completely throw me off. LOL

 

[Kiana]

I think true organizers are dedicated to doing this "all the time" I do that all day in my physical life. My brain works that way, but I refuse to spend time tagging products, when a basic word search fulfills 90% of my needs to find what I want. I've tried many suggestions over the years and I'll start with great intentions but ultimately, I needed to find what would work for my brain.

I keep shops separate. Then each designer in the shop inside that folder. I keep each product inside of the designer's folder.
Most designers name their elements which is usually the only things I'm really hunting for, IF I go hunting at all. I tend to stick with one kit 95% of the time, if I venture out, then it's usually for minor things like a button, or a certain flower etc.

It's pretty easy to just search "butterfly" or "button" inside of the Shops folder and come up with enough options.


I've found in the 13 years I've been doing this that I just want to scrap. I've learned to substitute things if I can't find something or it's taking too long. I think sometimes we get too caught up in the mechanics of a hobby and get inside our heads to the point we're not actually partaking in said hobby or enjoying it enough. I know I used to stress over a lot of things like organizing, or what programs to use, how to name things, etc...and I just decided one day I was done with all of that and have trained myself to get back to the basics like when I loved art class in school. Just create.

Sorry for the off tangent....
I say all that to say sometimes we have to "find" our own way. We can try everyone else's and they just don't fit us.

 

[bestcee]

Picture this: You are sitting down to scrap. You open your program. You find the photos you want to scrap. Now you go to your supplies.

How are you looking? Color? Theme? Time of year?

That's how you should organize.

I agree that ACDSee is smart enough to find a button for you. Or a string, or twine just by searching. Now, I do have some older kits that are labeled element 1, element 2, etc. I have the choice of either relabeling the file name, or tagging it. So far, I relabel the file name.

I will tag a theme to the kit preview if applicable (Disney, Autumn, Summer, Christmas, etc). I also have a BYOC tag, and a subtag BYOC0116, BYOC1022, etc. I like to be able to pull all the BYOC items to look at like 1 big kit, but store them in their designer folder. The only other place I'm more specific is with Journal Cards. Because I use them so much, and they have different names/uses I tag them:

• journal card pattern
• journal card quote
• journal card write

None of this tagging takes long going forward. When I have a day that I'm not feeling scrappy, but still want to play, I look at my supplies. I'll tag some, and move on. I'm not worried about tagging all my items at this point. There's too many! But, if I look for a specific kit, then I will throw a tag on it especially if I knew I had it, but couldn't find it. For me, I sometimes tag a kit with the basic colors (Rainbow to keep it simple), because I often think to myself "I want a red button". But, that tagging takes time, and is not a high priority. I usually only do it if I'm not feeling scrappy, but want to play.

I tag my templates too, but that's super basic - 1-2 Photos; 3-4 Photos; 5-6 Photos; 7-8 Photos; 9+ and Double Layout. I know that I can make photo spots work for other things, or add a photo spot, but if I'm in a hurry, I like to grab something that's close to the right photo number to start. This takes very little time, but saves me a lot of scrolling around.

 

[AliSarah]

After a few crashes of ACDSee because of my stash just being too large, I ended up just tagging the previews of the kits that I have. I keep everything together by designer with their chosen name notation, name, and initials of their store, so my Scrapping with Liz folder is called SWL Scrapping with Liz TLP. Inside, I keep all the kits in their own folders. For store collabs, I just put them in the store folder. So, if I go to my Lilypad folder, it's all collabs from this store.

I generally scrap one kit at a time, unless the MOC asks me to do otherwise. So, tagging the previews in ACDSee allows me to see what I have and search by colors, and themes... For me, that is all I need. If I was more into mixing up my kits and stuff, it might not work. So, I think the best system is one that fits how you scrap and that comes together for you easily enough that you can use it and spend more time scrapping than organizing!

Huggles!!
~Sarah~

 

[littlekiwi]

Picture this: You are sitting down to scrap. You open your program. You find the photos you want to scrap. Now you go to your supplies.

How are you looking? Color? Theme? Time of year?

That's how you should organize.

I kind of scrap by several things though. Theme, type of product, color would be my main ones though.

 

[bestcee]

I kind of scrap by several things though. Theme, type of product, color would be my main ones though.

I would start there. Maybe do theme, since that's an easy one. Then, if you find you need more specific sorting, you can consider sorting down.
By product do you mean button, paint, etc? Or something else?

 

[littlekiwi]

After a few crashes of ACDSee because of my stash just being too large, I ended up just tagging the previews of the kits that I have. I keep everything together by designer with their chosen name notation, name, and initials of their store, so my Scrapping with Liz folder is called SWL Scrapping with Liz TLP. Inside, I keep all the kits in their own folders. For store collabs, I just put them in the store folder. So, if I go to my Lilypad folder, it's all collabs from this store.

I generally scrap one kit at a time, unless the MOC asks me to do otherwise. So, tagging the previews in ACDSee allows me to see what I have and search by colors, and themes... For me, that is all I need. If I was more into mixing up my kits and stuff, it might not work. So, I think the best system is one that fits how you scrap and that comes together for you easily enough that you can use it and spend more time scrapping than organizing!

I do keep everything divided by designer & kit in the folders so there is some level of organisation to start with.

Oh I’m definitely only tagging previews for the same reason you do with the size of my stash and crashes etc.

See I think part of the issue is I very much end up being a mix and match scrapper as much as I try and start with one kit

 

[littlekiwi]

By product do you mean button, paint, etc? Or something else?

Yes if it’s a not in a kit or I have a separate preview for it…..at least I think that’s how I have done it in the past.

I know previously I’ve gone to the level of tagging store/designer, MOC, BYOC (I think I may have changed that one to just current BYOC until the end of each month) as well as the rest so I was burnt out by constantly tagging. This time I’m wanting to get to a level that is enough tagging for it to make sense to my scrapbooking brain but not so much that a) I become overwhelmed and b) I end up giving up

 

[Cath_]

overwhelmed

i sure am
thank you for asking here..
i envy you have folder file structure to even try to tag. all i have is pre-2017 folder stucture on driives, part copy's (not all same over many drives) and over 1000 kits still zipped. moved some things off, and wished i hadnt, mesed up alot of shortcuts.
so i will be watching for ideas to your questions with great interest

 

[cfile]

I don't tag anything. I keep Store/Designer/kit file system as many here, have already suggested. I too search re name like button etc in my file search.

I think we get overwelmed when we do so much with trying to organize the digital stash as opposed to scrapping and having fun with it. Easy file system is usually the best way I find

I also click on the date order in the file if I know it was something I downloaded recently, otherwise I look in my files alphabetically keeping the original file name as it was downloaded.

 

[HavaDrPepper]

I think you know that I'm another one that does the store/designer/kit filing system. That works best for me especially since I'm a one-kit scrapper. Tagging never seemed necessary for my style of scrapping.

However, I have set up a folder of kit previews for every kit I own. I have tagged each of the previews using Bridge as to the theme of the kit. I have made it a goal to use up my stash so have also set up labels in Bridge to show that I have used a kit. So now if I want to use a kit for autumn pictures, I search the previews folder in Bridge for autumn and any that are not labeled in red have not been used. I then look at those kits to determine if one will work for my vision of the layout. By doing this I have used some of those older kits that were from other places and I had forgotten I had them. It did take awhile to set up but since I did, I'm glad I did. I actually found a couple of older kits that were perfect for a series of layouts I was working on of pre-digital photos.

If I do need something that isn't in the kit, I just use the search in Picasa to see if I can find something.

 

[bellbird]

I'm another one that just keeps things in folders by designer, sang the Frozen ' Let it go ' song about other organising methods several years ago so I don't tag even previews anymore & just uses the windows search to find the odd things I need for mix & match, or often the TLP stores' search (the advanced search) actually.
I like that you can limit it to one or a few designers if I'm looking for something specific to a theme or product type with all the drop down menus.
Say I'm looking for an alpha for a specific layout (that I know I have a bunch of & collect because kits don't always have them & it's good to have options). But instead of wanting to see every single A-Z PNG file, in every colour variation, from every alpha pack on my computer in the Windows search, if there's too many results for a Windows search, I do that in the store.
So I would maybe limit it to Allison &BellaGypsy given I know they are some of the alpha pack queens and that a lot of my alpha stash is theirs. I just open some of the result previews from the first couple pages or so in a new tab if I haven't already spotted one from the thumbnails that jogs my memory of what's in my recent stash. The store will also tell me if I already have it downloaded, I can then find it with less scrolling usually & it's always faster than Windows searching my laptop with the last 6ish months of recent stuff & about 10yrs worth on EHDs.
It doesn't work with retired products obviously but it works well enough for me to scrap & not need to tag or sort product - the store's better at that than me anyway!

 

[Aerobigirl]

I used ACDSee for a while, but when we had a computer crash and replacement, I didn't have the energy to re-start from scratch.

My current approach is a bit mish-mash, but it works for me.

Top-level folder = one folder per store, one for all of my kit previews, alphas (all), templates (all), and one for Lynn Grieveson (she's in several stores and I have a lot of her content, so this is easier for me). I also have a folder for a kit I've made by collecting all of my favorites from every designer. When I was doing a lot of CT work, I also had a folder for current CT materials.

Second-level folders = Inside each folder, I have all of the kit previews for everything in that folder, alphabetical by name. It's sort of like having a visual order history inside each of my folders. Then, I have each product also alphabetical by name so the order of the previews matches the order of the sub-folders.

If something is discontinued, I retitle the kit preview and the kit so it starts with the letter Z, keeping the items in the folder but sorting them down to the bottom of the alphabet.

 

[dawnmarch]

I am a detailed tagger going way back and I've given thought to this over time as well. If I had to start all over again, I would definitely simplify my tags:

-For MOC purposes, I would tag by store because ACDSee lets you filter by two things so then I can just look at previews for TLP products. This is easy because you can easily tag whole folders

-then I would tag all previews so that I could look through them easily.

- I would probably tag by theme; so maybe seasons, holidays, travel, anything that has an obvious theme. And tag templates

Honestly, that might be it.

 

[mary kate]

I also use a Store/Designer/Kit file system, but with a few quirks/modifications based on how I actually scrap. Within the folders of my most-used TLP designers, I also have some theme-y subfolders: for FJD, for example, I organize kits under Spring; Summer; Fall; Winter; Heritage; Children/Teens; and etc. And I also have some themed folders for TLP designers overall (Christmas, arranged by year, and then by designer/kit; Styles; TLP Collabs; Mixed Media). And I also have an all-stores/all-designers Scrapping Tools folder, with Stitching; Fasteners; Cut-outs; Scallops and Trims; Page Masks; and several other subfolders.

A couple of years ago, I did a whole bunch of tagging with Bridge. Woohoo! I'm finally getting organized! And then I did something stupid (I honestly don't know what...like I said: stupid!), and lost all tagged links to the products. Argh! At that point, I simply gave up on a tagging system.

I wish I had started out with a tagging system from the get-go, because I do like to mix and mingle with my kits. But at this point, it's just too overwhelming and time-consuming. I use file search, and then basically just wing it.

 

[littlekiwi]

I am a detailed tagger going way back and I've given thought to this over time as well. If I had to start all over again, I would definitely simplify my tags:

-For MOC purposes, I would tag by store because ACDSee lets you filter by two things so then I can just look at previews for TLP products. This is easy because you can easily tag whole folders

-then I would tag all previews so that I could look through them easily.

- I would probably tag by theme; so maybe seasons, holidays, travel, anything that has an obvious theme. And tag templates

Honestly, that might be it.

That might be my best option - kind of a middle ground between no organisation and super detailed organisation.