Digital Scrapbooking: Organizing the Chaos

Digital scrapbooking can be addictive. Searching online for papers, kits, and elements, downloading freebies and buying kits from online sites. Everything gets downloaded into one folder and there it sits. As you keep adding to it, it becomes complete chaos.

If you are new to digital scrapbooking, start right away, if you are a seasoned digi-scrapper, get organized now and stay that way. It makes the process of actually deciding what to use for your pages much easier and faster. No more searching for that one paper you remember seeing but cannot find.

Take a few hours, or a full day depending on how much you have. How you organize your files is personal, but find a system that is easiest for you to easily find what you are looking for.

My personal system involved organizing by theme and themes within themes. Be specific if you have a large collection. I created separate folders for word art and overlays. Organize your folders by theme, a boy theme folder, further broken down within it with folders for sports, daddy, and stripes. A theme folder for girls, broken down into folders for flowers, stripes, mommy, etc. Seasonal folders for each season and then broken down internally by holiday. Sometimes you may need to make a copy of a paper or kit if it fits into more than one category.

Be sure to keep all your zip files in a separate folder and back it up so in the event of a serious hard drive crash, you can always get those precious kits back.

There, now don’t you feel better. All your files are organized and next time you open up your graphics program and are ready to begin your next digital scrapbook page you’ll be able to easily find that perfect paper to complement your pictures.

Barbara Ryan is the Owner/Digital Artist of Cherish Collages – Custom Photo Collage Design, www.cherishcollages.com a business dedicated to creating unique personal keepsakes and gifts from photographs. Collage styles include traditional blended collage, symmetrical block style collage, and artistic digital scrapbook style collage.

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