How to Organize Your Digital Scrapbooking Supplies for Free

As I said before you are going to need a lot of stuff to have fun digital scrapping. After a while you probably will not remember everything you have for a while. I am going to help you organize your collection in a couple of steps for each kit.

I know you are probably worried that you are going to have to spend more money just to organize your things. I know I didn't want to so I came up with a system that is totally free. The only thing you are going to need to spend is your time. A tip before you start is to organize each time you download your kits. That way it is never overwhelming.

An important thing about digital scrapbooking is to credit the designer and name the kit. You will want to remember the designer and kit name for each kit. Before you start you will probably want about 5 minutes for each kit that you have so you can finish quickly.

1. Create a couple of folders. You will first need to create a folder for all your scrapbooking things. You can skip that if you have a whole hard drive dedicated. After that you will want to create a folder called _Previews. The reason you are putting the underscore before it is because you will want that to be on top. After that you will want to create a folder for each designers work you have. If you have 10 kits by 3 different designers you will need to create 3 folders out of those designers names. The other folders you will want to create will be in the designer folders and they will be the kit names. You should do this as you get a kit.

2. Put each kit in the designer folder. Now you know will know who designed the kit and what the kit is called. Its perfect for when you need to give credit to them. This way you do not have to struggle looking back. This will also come in use later on, as i explain.

3. Put the preview in the folder _Previews. Many kits come with previews already included. If they are not included you will probably have to get them from the same place where you downloaded them.

4. Rename the Preview using Designer Name - Kit Name. To find the kit you are looking for you will want to name the preview with the designer's name first and then the kit name. That way you can do directly to the proper folders. That is why you spent so much time creating all those folders.

5. Make sure Picasa is connected to your _Previews folder. This way you can manage all your previews and view slideshows if you want to. This step is optional. You can view slideshows in Windows Explorer so do not worry if you do have Picasa or do not want to download it.