Organization

How does everyone organize their kits so they can find things? I just have a great big mess, and am thinking about re-organizing...Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

I use Google Picasa. It's free. You can tag all your images and give comments, and have categories of images that are different from the "real" folders on your hard drive, so the same image can be found in multiple ways. It's a big help!

https://picasa.google.com/

Well... At first I put all my new kits in a file on my desktop. I vow to use them at least once and then move them to my external hard drive. (that way I don't forget about them)

On the EHD I have them organized like this:

A folder called Personal Use Kits
Then Designer Name Folders
Then Kit Name Folders
Then within the kit, I break it down to Element folders, Paper Folders, Alphas, etc.

JaneAgain said:

How does everyone organize their kits so they can find things? I just have a great big mess, and am thinking about re-organizing...Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Click to expand...

After I Unzip my kits, I break them down as follows:

On my EHD, I have a folder called digital kits.
Then each designer gets their own folder.
Within the designer folder, each kit gets it own folder.
Then I take everything out of the unzipped folders and dump them into the kit folder. I like to keep the papers and elements together in one folder so I can open everything at once.

That is also why with my newer kits especially, I name everything, Paper_solid_blue.... or Paper_patterned_dots_red... or ribbon_pink... so that if you are doing a speed scrap and need to find a patterned paper or pink ribbon, you can type those into your search tool and find items in my kit easily.... Also, if you do what I do and dump the whole kit into one folder, all the papers stay together... we must have order even in our chaos! :rocker1:

I also use Picasa. I just want to caution you (I learned the hard way) if you move items around in Picasa you move them around on your computer too. I don't tag my stuff though. I unzip my items at once and it only takes a few seconds with unzip them all it is also free, then I rename the kit with the kits name, designer and PUO (personal use only) or S4H (Share for hire ok). Picasa automatically imports everything. I go through all the kits and put like items in albums (brads and eyelets, Alpha, Lace_RicRac etc) when I'm scrapbooking and find the item I want to use I right click and choose LOCATE ON DISK and it opens the orginial folder it's in and I drag and drop it into the program I'm using and I can see right off hand weahter or not it's PUO or S4H friendly. Hope this helps.

Thanks! I'm going to try that.

I used to use Picasa. Then I went to ACDSee. Now I use Windows Photo Gallery because the Tags stay with the items, no matter where I move them to. Plus its free and I don't have to worry about transfering the program when I get a new computer.

Thanks for telling me that.

I'm going to copy/paste my responce I left for this somewhere else b/c it's too long for me to retype. lol.

I organize my files like this:
DESIGNERNAME
-- KitName
----- everything that comes in it - with only ONE preview & ONE TOU [many designers put a TOU & Preview in each folder] - I move all elements/papers into one folder and then make a seperate folder titled "alpha" for any alphas that go with the kit.

Then, I copy/paste every preview image and put it in a "!!!PREVIEWS" folder so I can just scroll through that folder, find the kit I want to use & since every designer puts their name & kit name on the preview image - I can go to the folder and use it. I always used to look at the preview images but I would go through every folder trying to remember which kit had which preview. [some previews I found don't have the designer name // kit name - so I rename that preview to have both in the file name.]

I also have two other folders:
"NEEDSTOBEEXTRACTED" is where I put kitsI download [the zip files]
"NEEDSTOBEORGANIZED" is where I put the unzipped files from the zips in the NTBextracted folder.
Then, every week or so - I will go through and unzip / organize files.

[which I'm behind on doing the above but my EHD is dying after having it a few months, so I'm going to be looking into gettin ga new one and getting rid of this one.. maybe? =o\]

I really like that you do that Jen! It makes it so much easier for me to find stuff. It is such a pain in the behind to rename/tag a huge kit that has like 50 elements. I have 215 GB of scrapping stuff, so I just gave up on tagging. I have my main scrap folder with kits I haven't used yet and challenge info. When I've used them, they go in my materials folder; kits are sorted by shop, then designer name. I also have a seperate folder for templates (sorted by photo numbers), alphas, word arts (sorted by theme), and misc elements like frames.

Jen said:

That is also why with my newer kits especially, I name everything, Paper_solid_blue.... or Paper_patterned_dots_red... or ribbon_pink... so that if you are doing a speed scrap and need to find a patterned paper or pink ribbon, you can type those into your search tool and find items in my kit easily.... Also, if you do what I do and dump the whole kit into one folder, all the papers stay together... we must have order even in our chaos! :rocker1:

Click to expand...

That is really smart!

velociraptorx said:

Then, I copy/paste every preview image and put it in a "!!!PREVIEWS" folder so I can just scroll through that folder, find the kit I want to use & since every designer puts their name & kit name on the preview image - I can go to the folder and use it. I always used to look at the preview images but I would go through every folder trying to remember which kit had which preview. [some previews I found don't have the designer name // kit name - so I rename that preview to have both in the file name.]

Click to expand...

I stopped using Picasa since posting my earlier post. I use the stuff built into MacOS now. I haven't used Windows in a LONG time (I was a Linux user before Mac lol) so I don't know if this will help at all, but here's the general idea.

I have a "by designer" folder, and each designer has a folder in it, and all their kits and whatnots are in their folder. The folder icon is the preview for what's in it.

I have a "by store" folder, and e.g. there's a "Ginger Scraps" folder in there, and aliases (I think Windows calls them shortcuts?) to the designers that sell here. This is nice because 1) some sites give extra points or whatever if you use their designers and 2) the designers list is long and if I know what store someone is in, it can be faster to look there. Using aliases is nice because some people sell in multiple stores.

I have Smart Folders (saved searches) for the different kinds of stuff, like kits, templates, alphas, etc. So if I look in the Kits Smart Folder, for example, I can scroll through all the kits. As long as I've set the folder icon to the preview, this is basically like the !!!Previews folder Sica has, except I don't have to copy files anywhere. It's added automatically because it's a Smart Folder and I still only have one copy of it on my hard drive.

If there's anything else I think I might search by, for example if the kit is called Fireworks but I might want to find it when I search "Independence Day", then I add those search terms as Spotlight comments. There are basically tags built-in on MacOS. I don't know what that would be on Windows.

Everything is on my laptop's hard drive until I've organized it (I do like Sica with papers, elements, alpha folders in each kit) and then I move it to the EHD into the proper location.

Also, I label things when I've used them, so I know which kits I've not used yet. The ones I've used are yellow and the unused ones are uncolored.

here is a questionf or you all.
I like making graphics for other people and I know only SOME kits are okay to use for S4O / S4H [don't worry, I follow every designers TOU - as a maker of other things, I completely understand!] Now, here is my question, how do you keep S4O/S4H kits marked? or do you? I just have no idea when a kit is S4O or S4H unless I check the TOU of each one - which is a pain.. some designers put it on their preview; most don't [that I've noticed]

I rename the TOUs and previews so they are the first things listed in the folder, and when I'm renaming the TOU I put at the end, like: {TOU CU}.txt

I rename ALL of my kits by name of kit, Designers name and PUO or S4H. So when I'm working in Picasa and find the right element I right click on it and view it on the hard drive it tells me if I can or can't use it. If not I close the window and continue looking through my stash until something else strikes my fancy.

lorryfach said:

I rename the TOUs and previews so they are the first things listed in the folder, and when I'm renaming the TOU I put at the end, like: {TOU CU}.txt

Click to expand...

That sounds like the perfect thing for me to do. Since I have a folder full of the preview images so I know where to go - I can rename it & put S4O // S4H // PUO at the beginning and they will all be organized by those! AHHH!! Thank you so much. =o) Tons more organization I need to do. Good thing I'm bringing mylaptop with me when we go out of town.. where there is no internet. lol. Give me something to do.

I totally never thought of using Picasa. That's a great idea. All these ideas are fantastic