Keeping track of scrapbook supplies???

I don't tag. But two things I do make it easy to find useful items while scrapping. First, I always change the default folder image to be the kit preview, so as I'm scrolling through my supply folder, I SEE what I have. Secondly, I use the search function to find specific items like staple, button, ribbon, and themes such as happy, halloween, and hope. Most designers give the items in their kits good file names, so if I search for something like "hope" I'm likely to find word art with that word, for example.
I don't have time at the moment because I'm about to leave for work, but let me know if you'd like me to explain how I make the folder image be the kit preview. To be brief, on a Mac, it's just a matter of right-clicking on it in the file info and pasting the kit preview image in place of the folder.

Another thing is that storage is cheap. I don't delete much.

 

I'm not a tagger either because my stash is WAY too huge to start that now. I'm with Michele, I don't delete much because storage is so cheap and I'm also always thinking... "but what if I need it later?" I'm a digi-hoarder.

Something I started doing a couple of years ago that really helps me finds kits quickly is that I created a folder of themed previews. I have one folder called "Links to Themes" and inside there I have 32 sub-folders with my most used themes of kits. Inside each folder I will save the preview of a kit that would work for that theme and then I also create a link to that kit, so that when I double click the link, it'll open the folder where the kit is stored. This saves me so much time searching for stuff! To create a link you just copy the file location (like H:\0-TLP CT\0-Used\Allison Pennington\AllisonPennington_Cake) and then go to the theme folder, right click, click New, then Create Shortcut and then paste the file location link, click Next and then click Finish. (I'm on a PC). Here's what it looks like in my "Birthdays" folder:



I have theme folders for: 4th of July, Birthdays, Camping, Carnival, Christmas, Church, City, Cooking, Covid, Crafting, DIY, DOctor, Driving, Easter, Exercise, Fishing, Garden, Graduation, Halloween, Lots of Photo Templates, Movies and TV, New Years Eve, Reading, Road Trips, School, Scrapbooking, Snow Kits, Sports, School Colors, Summer, Swimming, Video Games

 

@Karen Those theme folders are brilliant! I use shortcuts, but never thought of theme folders!

 

I have ACDSee. I use super general tags - holidays, Disney, big themes like gaming, covid, boy, dates, days of the week, travel, templates. There's not a ton of kits that are super boy kits, so I always tag them. I also tag my journaling cards - filler, writing, and quotes. I do Project Life, and need to be able to grab journal cards quickly, especially for writing, or I get super behind on the project. I also tag my templates by general photo spots - 1, 2-3, 4-6, 7+.

That said, my stash is also quite large. So, not a lot is tagged. I tend to go in organizational spurts, so I'll tag for an hour or two /day for about 2-3 weeks. Then fall out of the habit. I do love the tagged ones, because there's often an element or something I love that wasn't names in a way I'll think to search or a brad with a camera named brad. But if I'm in a hurry and not finding what I want, I search like Michele said above.

I'm still using ACDSee 2018, and it does what I want, so I haven't upgraded. I like that it views all the .psd files, so I don't have to have a separate program, or keep the .tiff files. I also can right click in my downloads folder, and it'll use ACDSee to show me the file.

Delete - Yep! I totally delete kits that are either not my style anymore, or I've "killed". Like, I created a book one time with only 1 kit. When I was done, I never wanted to see that kit again - so I deleted it. I don't regret it, especially holiday kits. I don't delete them all, but I will go through and delete some that aren't my style anymore. And freebies. I've deleted a lot of freebies!

 

I use ACDSee to tag. I'm now updating my database to just tag the folders/previews. It's too much trouble to tag papers/elements, so I tag by designer, store, theme, season, etc.

 

I don't tag but then I use Picasa instead of Bridge. However, I do have Bridge and a few weeks ago I tagged just the previews for my most used kits folder. Somehow Windows thought it was a new install on a computer restart and I lost the tags listing in Bridge. I had to look at the properties of each preview to see how I had tagged them to rebuild that tag list (it is now saved on an EHD). Those tags are available in Picasa if I want to use them and I will admit it is easier to tag in Bridge than it is in Picasa. I also use Paint Shop Pro to scrap so the Adobe integration is not something I'm interested in.

I have deleted very old freebies from when I first started digi scrapping in 2008. But I kept kits that I purchased. Those really old kits are on several EHD's that I can pull out if needed.

I spent time last year setting up a spreadsheet listing all my kits based on something @Tree City had talked about in an organizing thread at one time. That has proven to be helpful when looking up those really old kits. But then I also track everything I use on each layout on another spreadsheet.

 

I was on vacation last week and spent hours and hours copying kits from USBs to an EHD. 98% of the time I download purchased kits at the office, then copy the zips to USBs, then copy the zips to EHDs. I used to delete the kits off my office 'puter and USBs once they'd been copied to an EHD. Now I keep the zips on an EHD connected to my computer and on the USBs ... they are cheap.

Anyhow ... while copying kits I deleted a lot of freebies that no longer appealed to me. Storage is cheap, but I didn't want to have to look through or back-up digi-crap that I knew I'd never use.

 

This is exactly why I delete some things!

 

I keep it simple. Mine are alphabetical, by Designer. It they're from a store, besides TLP, they're by store, then alphabetical, by designer.

 

This is what I do as well. I'm lucky to be that organized lol

 

Me too.

 

My kits are stored by designer name, alphabetically. I back them up to my Amazon Drive so I can access them from the cloud if I'm not at my physical desk.

I tag previews. I have a previews folder... my habit when I download is to tag the kit preview with "justpreviews", designer name, store name, "colortagme" "themetagme" and then I also tag the type of thing it is (papers, cards, alphas, etc)... oh and I do make sure the end of the file name is _pvw... I copy that tagged preview image to my previews folder.

On my computer, this works really great. I can search my previews folder by any of my tags, or view the tags in groups.

On my Amazon drive, the tagged info doesn't work, which is why I started naming the preview images with _pvw at the end. In my Amazon drive, I can search "_pvw" to see what I have, but I recently made preview folders instead for drive which works better there.

Tags I use are for the major stores I shop from (makes it easy to re-label if a designer moves shops or retires), designer names (which I like when there are collaboration kits, especially between different shops)... then I have major holidays, birthdays, anniversaries... baby, kids, girl, boy, reading, Wizarding, disney... I do seasons, and project life type things. I started with the sections the Lilypad (and other stores) has in the shop... if designers put their kit under the baby section, I tagged it baby in my previews...
Then came up with additional themes when I was searching for that specific thing (like reading or wizarding). I know when I buy a kit, it was either the theme or the colors that grabbed my attention, so that's how I know what the important info to tag is.

Whenever I'm feeling an organizational mood, I go in and tag colors or themes.

Sorry for this novel. Hope it was helpful!

 

Karen... I am with you... Way too much stuff to really start organizing now... Will think about your process... interesting.... Hmmmm????

 

so I have not been to this thread for a bit! Have a few comments. to make... First of all tagging as I understand it in any form... ie ACDSEE or Karen's way by theme with links, only works till you move a folder, while doing further organizing... As I stated previously I spent a month, a long time ago organizing files from a company I was no longer using , figuring everything was going to stay in its place... WELL last week, ACDsee did its thing and opened uninvited, so I thought I would take a look at it.... first time in a very long time... Well... Gosh.... Back in October my hard drive was totally full , and the fix became transferring ALL supply downloads to an EHD ... Oops... I do not think the files I organized on ACDsee are available there any longer!!! 2nd I had hoped to use Christa's method, and having read that the new OS from MS will not allow for the open view of folders I had thrown out the thought process that perhaps Bridge still did it... Well scratch that idea... Bridge does not allow you to peek into the files at all!!!! For me, I will try to implement some of the suggestions, here, but will continue to dump things into my folders of parts and pieces, because when I want flowers for instance, I want to see lots to choose from, not the few that are in any single kit... and wordart is another thing... totally gets lost in all the folders... I will continue to pop in here, looking for new thoughts... we all seem to be in our own variations of the same boat!!!!!

 

But then there are the designers on more than one site... and there are designers that move to other sites... I learned a long time ago, that placing a designer in a store, often times was not the way to go.. so now I have separate folders for the designers I use the most... ie NBK, Rachel, Rebecca... In Rachel's folder specifically I have opened and dumped everything together.. easy to scroll through and see what it there... for now anyway...

 

By having kits under a designer folder which is under a store folder is another way to show what kits can be used for any challenges at that store. If a designer folder is not under their store, I would probably not even look for their kits to do challenges because they would be "out of sight, out of mind". In the past I have had to move designers from one store to another. Drag and drop to new store folder... easy.

As for designers that sell at multiple stores, I put the kit in the designer folder for the store where I purchased it. But in all reality, I actually don't buy from those designers because I pretty much only shop at 2 stores and there is no crossover between them. The only designers that are at 2 different stores in my collection are the Project Mouse designers. For them, I just have a Project Mouse folder and store all kits in that folder!

 

I don't have any designers currently selling on more than one site.
I keep all of 1 designers stuff in a folder with their name. When Little Butterfly Wings moved, I simply moved her folder out of TLP and into her new store.
Easy peasy and I don't have to worry about things for challenges.

If I want to see a bunch of flowers all together, like when I did my camera layout, I open my TLP folder and then have windows search camera. Tons of camera elements from different kits.

I did the same in ACDsee and found that it saw more camera elements than windows. Not sure why, but it was helpful.

As to having things get unorganized, most programs if you move stuff outside the program don't know where to find it. It's like when your mom moved your backpack and then you couldn't find it. If you moved the backpack, you knew where it was. Lightroom is the same.