Happy Easter Sunday! What a beautiful day in the Chicagoland area! Before I run off to church, I wanted to share a few tips that help me keep up with my stamps and stencils and find what I'm looking for right away. I admit I'm a bit of an organization enthusiast. When I know where things are, I'm happy - I like to spend less time looking for stuff and more time creating. And since I'm confessing, I'll also admit I have purchased two of the same thing (e.g. a stamp set) because I forgot I already had it.
At our Stampscapes retreat last year my stampin' sister Cheryl brought several images to share. She had an awesome organization system for her images which inspired me to organize my images in the same way. NOTE: If this is something you're interested in doing, I encourage you to do it over time. Depending on how much stuff you have, it can take quite a bit of time - I found it's worth the investment in time! It did take me a few months working a little piece at a time. Now, as I get new items I log them when they come into my house.
To start, I had to make a decision how I wanted to categorize the image catalog - category and manufacturer. I decided on both. For images I had a lot of, i.e. Art Impressions, Crafter's Companion, Rubbernecker, Stampcapes, Stampin' Up!, I put those in their own sections. For my individual wooden and unmounted images, I put them in by category, i.e. trees, animals, music, and of course the every popular misc. I would recommend you pick a system that works for your brain. Make your system to fit you.
I had a base of image sheets for entries in my catalog to work with. These were sheets I had stamped the images on or cut out the image on the package that came with the stamp. Click here to see how I organize my stamps. I pulled those sheets out of the individual binders that held the rubber stamps. For the wooden stamps I have in a organization tower, I stamped those onto copy paper and made sheets (this is what took a looooooooooooooooong time :o). For the rubber stamps that came on panels and had images printed, I just scanned in the panels, sized them and printed them out.
For my SU! images, I pulled out the label covers and copied them. Click here to see my unmounting journey and how I organized my SU! images. I used to be a demo and have a huge collection of SU images that I fit into a small area. :)
I also have a section for my stencils. Since getting hooked on Gelli Plate printing, my stencil collection has increased. :)
I added tabs to separate the sections.
I wrote a code next to the images/groups of images so I'd know where they were located in my overall storage. This way I could quickly find "that one tree" to go into a scene. Now, rather than digging through four different areas, I sit back and can flip through my image catalog to build a design and then go right to where the images are. I hope this post has given you some tips or inspired you to organize in a way that saves you some time.
Shout Out: Thank you to my stampin' sister Cheryl for the wonderful system idea!
Take care and STAY POSITIVE!
