Digital Scrapbooking GiRLs

Organizing Your Digital Scrapbooking Supplies

The steps to organization

As with traditional scrapbooking, it’s important to organize your digital scrapbooking supplies so that you can easily find them. If you build a routine from the start, it will be much easier to keep down the digital clutter, and find the scrapbooking supplies when you need them.

1. The first step is to place all digital scrapbooking supplies into their own folder. Mine is called “Digital Scrapbooking” and absolutely everything goes in there.

2. When I buy or download a digital scrapbooking freebie, the file goes into my “downloads” folder. I also save a copy of the preview that the designer offers. Once the file is downloaded, I match the download with the preview, and move the matched set to my “Digital Scrapbooking” folder.

The 2 files are not always named the same, so I take the time to make some adjustments, like giving the preview the same name as the actual download. It may seem tedious, but it pays off in the long run. When you see a preview of a kit you like, all you have to do is open the file with the same name, and you’re scrapbooking!

3. I personally like to keep track of the files by designer; that way if I want to scrapbook something in a particular style, it’s easy to find the right digital supplies. So if the designer’s name is not already there, I include it at the beginning of the file name. Then I rename the other file to match.

4. Sometimes designers offer scrapbooking freebies in little bits, building a complete digital scrapbooking kit over a period of time. I like to combine my files, so that “Designer DigiScrap Papers1″, “Designer DigiScrap Papers2″, “Designer DigiScrap Elements” and “Designer DigiScrap QP” files all end up in one folder called “Designer DigiScrap Kit”.

I also like to do that with collaborative kits, ones where several designers get together to create digital scrapbooking papers and elements using a common theme and style.

5. You may want to take this a step further, by organizing your digital scrapbooking supplies by designer, style (retro, grungy, shabby, girl, boy, vintage…), occasion (Christmas, Halloween, vacation…), colors, seasons or type (templates, digital kits, word art, stitching, overlays…).

You really need to use your judgement here. If you always use templates, then you may want to group templates in a sub-folder. If you use staples or stitches in all your layouts, then you may want to separate those out so they are handy. On the other hand, you don’t want to over-classify. Many scrapbook papers and elements work well for multiple scrapbook layout themes, so you just need to find the balance between having to look in too many sub-folders, and seeing all the Christmas kits in July.

Opening downloaded digital scrapbooking files

When you purchase, or get free digital scrapbooking supplies online, they are provided as a compressed file — typically you will see a zip or rar format. The utility compresses the file folder by running an algorithm that removes the “blank information spaces” in a file folder, thus making it significantly smaller. The compressed file version is used in online file sharing because it takes less time to send or download.

In order to use the graphics, you will have to uncompress the information. Therefore you will need software on your computer that allows you to do that. If you’re using Windows XP, then your operating system can already do it for you — all you have to do is double-click on a zipped file, and it will open like a folder. If you’re using older versions of Windows, then you will need to install an application to open Zip files.

WinZip: is the most widely used compression tool for PCs. You can download the free evaluation version at: http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm. Full software costs about $30.

Stuffit Expander: Decompresses all files in any of the StuffIt formats, including .zip, .rar and more. Comes in Windows and Macintosh versions.

Saving your digital scrapbooking supplies

Finally, you will want to save your digital scrapbooking supplies, especially your purchased ones. Depending on your hard drive space, you may need to get an external hard drive to save the digital scrapbooking supply files.

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For other digital scrapbooking tutorials, check out the digital scrapbooking tutorials category link.

If you started with this post, you may want to check out our Digital Scrapbooking page, with an overview of digital scrapbooking, and links to detailed information on everything you need to know to get started with digital scrapbooking today.

Happy Digi-Scrapping!
Digital Scrapbooking GiRLs

Published in: DigitalWorld, Digital Scrapbooking Tutorials, Digital Scrapbooking