How to keep everything organized?

[heidip2p]

Hi, I am just getting back into digi scrapping and am loving it. Before I start buying new kits I really want to get organized. Is there a way to label things so I can find them? I am always just randomly searching through my kits for different things. Thank you for any help. Heidi

[Chantal Miller]

The most popular method is a picture management system with a tagging system. Acdsee comes highly recommended but Picassa is also pretty good and its free.

For me however, I only use Picassa for tagging my pics and image enhancement but its can be used for tagging your stash (by colour, type and designer)

For my stash, provided that the designer and kit name are in the file name, I break up my kits after download and sort them by type (patterned paper, clipart, wordart etc). I put the previews in a seperate folder and browse that when I am looking for some thing in particular. It works for me because its organised exactly like my traditional stash with the added bonus of the previews.

Like I said not the most popular method but it works for me.

[ryliesmom]

I just got Picassa and have been working on tagging everything. It's taking forever, but will be so worth it when I'm done. I'm excited about not having to look through every kit looking for an alpha or stitches again.

[glumirk]

Also, if you have Windows you can download Windows Live Photo Gallery (or on Vista it comes as Windows Photo Gallery) and it'll let you scroll through all of your kits without having to open all of the folders. You can also tag everything, and find it that way. I love WLPG!

[Gemma]

I feel so un organised when I read threads like this, I don't tag anything lol.

I have different folders such as 'SSD' then inside that I have 'CT Kits' and 'Bought Kits', I have a few different folders for different shoppes of course.

Then in the folders I have the kits name and the name of the designer. That's as organised as I get, but it works for me, lol!

[junebug]

i have separate folders for each store and then for each designer. the kits just get stashed into the corresponding folder. easy peasy. no way could i break up all the kits into papers, elements, alphas and have them all mixed!

[kbbeale]

I have always organized my kits by designer name, then kit name. Inside that folder I have "alpha", "elements" and "paper". Thats about as organized as it gets for me. I generally can remember whats in what kit so I dont do a lot of searching, ie color scheme or a certain alpha, etc. Breaking up the kits would send my OCD into overdrive, LOL

Kristen

[ColleenSwerb]

I tried breaking up kits, and it about gave me a heart attack.
I'm a kit scrapper, so I rarely go outside of a kit to search for something. So since that's how I scrap, I organize by store, then designer. Within the designer folder, I have a folder for kits, and a folder for everything else (element packs, freebies). Within the kit folder are folders for AP, EP, and PP.

I love my alpha's but I tend to forget about the awesome alphas that come in kits. So I recently started breaking out all my SSD alpha's into one main alpha folder. They get labeled with the designer and kit name so that I can quickly see if there's an alpha that matches the kit I'm using (if I've broken the alpha out).