One of the benefits of digital scrapbooking over traditional scrapbooking is that you don’t need storage space to keep all your scrapbooking tools and stuff. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t store things when digital scrapbooking. You do, but it’s in digital format. That’s why it is important that you organize your folders or you’ll just end up with one big digital mess on your computer’s harddisk.
If you look around the net, you’ll find many free digital scrapbook goodies to collect. You can go crazy downloading all the cute stuff out there. Very soon, all these cute stuff keeps piling up. You’ll soon find that designing a scrapbook page takes longer and longer. This is because you have to spend more time sifting through all the images in your file. Getting your scrapbook stuff organized is highly beneficial. So, how do you go about it?
Categories
Divide your scrapbook elements into different categories. There is no hard and fast rule on how to do this. You create your own system that works the best for you. Here is an example of the different categories you can create:
- Alphas
- Background and Papers (you can further create subfolders for different colors)
- Buttons
- Nature (such as flowers, butterflies, leaves etc…)
- Frames
- Ribbons and Bows
- Stitches
- Tags
- Hearts
- Brushes
- Wordart, quotes, poems
- Journaling paper
- Eyelets, Pins, Clips, Fasteners
- Ploppers
- Full Kits
- Embellishments
- Celebrations (Christmas, Birthdays, Halloween)
Tracking The Source
Sometimes when you post your scrapbook creations online, you are required to give credit to the artist or attribute where you got the scrapbook images. One way to keep track of this is to create a unique file naming system. The ladies over at Scrap Girls have this figured out, so why not do what they do. Here are two examples:
MRE_Inspired_Emb_Pockets_Special.png
TCS_BeautifulLife_Emb_Special
The first three alphabets are the initials of the artist. This is followed by the name of the scrapbook collection.
Tagging
To speed up the process of searching through your files, you can use a program such as ACDSee, iPhoto, Picasa, Shoebox or Adobe Bridge that allows you to tag the products. So if you are looking to add a button to your page, all you have to do is type in “button” and the program will showcase all the images that you’ve tagged as “button”.
One thing you might want to consider is breaking up the full kits you download and separating the elements into their appropriate folders. Do this if you like to mix and match scrapbook elements from different packages. If you like using elements from one kit to coordinate your scrapbook design, then obviously this is not a good idea.
If you are new to digital scrapbooking, make sure you don’t miss this important step of organizing your files. If you’ve already created a “digital mess” on your harddisk, do find time to get organized. It may take a few hours but it will be worth your while. Remember, the best filing system is one that works best for you. It is a personal thing because we each work with the products differently. The goal is to find what you want with ease. As long as you reach that goal, you’ve got it right.