This is a two part thread today. 1. How do you organize your digi-stash? Do you have a system that works well for you? With the mega retirement sale going on through 31MAR, I took a peak at each page in the sale. Then, I marked kits I already have in my stash with an orange dot. I organize my kits by store, followed by designer. The orange dot lets me know the kit is retired (or about to be). 2. Do you have a favorite layout from the past that uses a kit from this year's sale? I'd love to see the layout and the kit. This layout was made in 2014! It uses Allison Pennington's Rain, Rain. Bits of the Rain, Rain collection are in the retirement sale.
Kit organization. The bane of my existence. I had a pretty good system going on my Mac but I switched to Windows in 2020 because of the inability to upgrade the Mac. I have yet to come up with a good plan for Windows. @ArmyGrl Are you using a separate folder for each designer?
I do a folder for the store then create individual folders within for each designer.Each kit is listed by name. Once a kit has retired I add a ‘z’ to the beginning of the file name if that makes sense. If it is a collab then I save it to both designers….in effect I then gave 2 copies of the same kit but helps me in the remembering, lol.
I have a folder for Lilypad, then a folder for each designer in there. I also have folders for things like BYOC and MPM that I keep those collections together by month. I love that I can go in those folders and mix and match products without having to go find them all separately. Then when stuff is retired, I add "_RETIRED" to the end of the folder.
for kit organising I'm a tagger using ACDSee. I store my kits in folders: store/designer/kit . I have a tag for currently in the store, I've been removing it from some of my stash today.
Ditto to Jaye's method. Store folder/designer folder/kit folder. I add a z- on the folder name for retired kits. That way they sort to the bottom in both Windows explorer and Picasa. In the Store folder I also have a folder for Collabs which is where the store collabs go. I also put a copy of the preview for the kit in the designer folder.
Yes. My folders go as such: Cloud Storage-->Kits-->Store Name-->Designer-->individual kits by name So, even if a designer sells at more than one store, I tend to keep the kit within the original store from which the kit was downloaded. I often put a kit preview along with my layout into social media. On more than one occasion I quoted one store but the kit preview had the logo for another store. Oops. Keeping the kit within the original store helps prevent this happening
IMO, the best reason to keep kits organized in a folder for the designer is inevitably the designer may leave the current store and move to a new one. When Bella Gypsy, Kristin Aagard, Fiddle-Dee-Dee and Scrapping With Liz came here because of Scrap Orchard shutting down, all I had to do was create the folder for TLP then move the designer's folder to it. Easy peasy! I have stuff from some designers that might have been at 3 or 4 stores during the time I bought their stuff. Also, if a designer sells at 2 stores, I put their kit in the store folder that I buy it from since more than likely I don't frequent the other store. Don't have enough money to buy from all the stores (or time to use the kits)!
As I've been looking in the Retirement Sale and my stash - I realize a lot of single product items are going away...but the kit sold as a coordinated set is not. Yipee!!! So, the elements alone and the papers alone are in the sale...but not the kit containing both items (depending on the collection of course).
Just file folders! My hierarchy is Store - Designer - Kit. I put everything but the alphas in a kit folder as is -- no sub-folders, so the papers are mingled with the elements, etc. It does not bother me to scroll - but I hate having to open another file folder to find something. I do have a separate folder & sub-folders for retired designers: Retired Designers - Designer - Kit. I don't use alphas that much and often times I want to see all my choices grouped together. So they get their own file folder under the designer. Typically named: "Alpha - kit name - descriptive words", where the descriptive words are something like blue wood or gold metal. I also group lone ranger kits - i.e. if they are just paints, just masks, or just papers. I group these by naming the folders: "Effects - name of product", or "Dates - name of product", or "Paper - name of product". Again this groups all my choices together so I can find my options for a date tag or a mask, etc. I also group all the DYD products by starting their folders with "DYD". Note: in photo below, some of mine still have Christmas attached because I later changed to the DYD prefix and was lazy to take the Christmas off. I add " - freebie" and " - Retired" to the end of the kit names where appropriate. I will also add descriptive words to kit names if I feel like the designer's name doesn't tell me the contents, i.e. "- winter", "- nautical", etc. I refuse to ever again load everything up into an organization system or spend the time tagging stuff -- been burned one time too many and lost all that work. I use Windows search feature to find things. So designers - name your items well and I will use them!! Call them element1, element2, etc. and sadly, unless I am using your kit I will probably never use them. Typically I use the Extra Large Icons view so I can see the folder.jpg file peeking out to help with color selection. But here is list view so you can see a portion of my folder names in my Lynn Grieveson folder.
Oh - maybe this is why I keep going to flag things as retired and they already are flagged retired from a previous time. Probably best to just check the store when doing a challenge that requires current items only!!!
I'm in a workshop for creating a kit right now and when someone asked how to name files, I contributed my 2 cents. One of the things I suggested was actually calling a flower "flower" in the element name. A bracket should be called a bracket, a button should be called a button, a brad should be called a brad etc. I also emphasize that if things are named like that, it is easier to find them in a search, no matter what program you use to search. Many of the people in the workshop do not frequent digital stores like I do and don't have the experience with using items from lots of different designers. At most they might have downloaded a freebie from a blog but mostly if they don't make it on their own, they download individual items from a couple of websites. They had never thought about that at all, even something simple as naming the kit and including the name of the kit in the file name! Let's just say I won't make a living as a designer but what I've learned is that they work hard and I'm very willing to keep funding them! Although I have noticed some tricks that probably does make some things quick and easy. I think the hardest thing so far was deciding on what color palette to use... that took me several days! Oh, and I cannot make a staple from scratch at all.
I store mine by Store folder>Designer Folder>Kit Folder. I sort mine and add the dates to the beginning of the name of the kit folder-- for example The Lilypad>Lynn Grieveson>2023-03 Weathered Still Life Papers. I sort by date to help keep things in the order they were released, which also helps me find stuff when searching because I will remember it was for example, a spring themed kit so I will know to look in the March/April time frame in each year if I don't remember when exactly something was released. I keep copies of the BYOC seperate previews in a folder for each month/year inside a BYOC folder, so I can know what coordinates. I keep all the Memory Pockets Monthly kits sorted by year/month together, along with the add-ons. I add retired to the end of the kit name when things retire, then each December move all retired stuff to a seperate "Retired" folder outside of the Lilypad folder. That way I can make sure nothing is retired that I want to use for Month of Challenges. I need to back everything up and move the retired folder to an external hard drive. When I have a collab, I tend to put it into the folder of the designer I use more often, with a copy of the preview in the other designer's folder.
My folders are organized by store then designer then kit. Thanks for pointing out that some pieces are being retired but not kits Lisa! I’ll have to check the store again. I’ve been renaming kits RETIRED but I like the quicker z method and will definitely change to that.
Oh, I've talked about digi supply organization multiple times over the years. I've been through File Explorer, ACDSee, Bridge, and Lightroom. I have loads of keywords. I'm woefully behind on the organization of my stash b/c the past couple of years have stunk and I just didn't have it in me. Now I'm getting back to the place where I feel able to handle it again. I still have my basic folder structure: SCRAPBOOK KITS KITS TO SCRAP RETIRED DESIGNERS I'm starting to just tag product previews as I seem to go for theme more than I used to.
I too use folders. A bit different than most- but it works for me! I have a CT WORK folder that is where anything creative team that needs done lives until I finish it. I also have a TO BE USED folder. That one is either freebies or purchased supplies that are then separated by store that need to be used (I rarely purchase something I don't use for this reason!) I have another large folder on my EHD called "KITS" that are sorted by theme. When I've used something, I take the kit or the template folder from my "to be used" or "CT WORK" folder and paste it into the corresponding theme- then create a shortcut for that specific kit and add that to the correct store folder, as well as separate folder for each designer I CT for. That way I can search either theme/store or the designer. Clear as mud!? lol! Works for me though...
Couldn't have said it better myself! It's been ever evolving with me over my digi scrapping years. I have used ACDSee over the years but as of right now just use the folders within Windows after many issues with ACDSee (they may have all been related to my previous laptop but at the moment I am too gunshy to try again to just lose all my tagging work for the 999th time!) I organize by store - my main three stores (soon to be two) with each designer inside that, then Other Designers (who may have retired or are at a different store) then I have folders for my presets and fonts (as I don't keep them installed). For TLP currently I also have a folder that is 0CT Work with folders of release dates in them that I move the appropriate product into temporarily until I have used it.
@HavaDrPepper - Exactly!!! Since I throw everything in together, I have even run across kits where the designer duplicated names within the same kit, but stored them in different sub-folders. They were completely different art.