One of the best parts of being a garden girl at 2peas was amassing a giant collection of digital scrapbooking kits. And then I continue to add more.
But in spite of the zillions of digital products on our home server, I found myself using the same ten over and over again, because I didn’t have the desire to pour through all of my files before starting a layout. I created a hard copy preview of all of my digital kits that means I get to quickly look through all my digital patterned paper before starting a layout. (If only the same could be said for my actual patterned paper!)
95% of digital kits come with a small jpeg preview of the kit that shows its contents. I used those jpegs (you don’t need to resize them–they are already tiny) and pasted them onto 8.5×11 photoshop documents. My organization of the previews mirrors how I organize my digital kit files. They are organized into one giant digital kit folder, then each store gets a folder, then each designer. The exception to this rule is layout templates, which have their own folder and all templates from various stores/designers are stored there.
Now whenever I buy a new kit or template, I print out the web preview and cut it out and paste it onto the appropriate sheet (as you can see in the picture).
You could get much fancier with these and design something pretty, or print it nicely on photo paper, but I wanted the quick, easy, stress-free and cheap version.
What do you do with the kits that don’t have a web preview saved in their folder (other than curse them under your breath)? You can deal with it two ways. You can steal the preview off of the seller’s website or use Photoshop’s contact sheet feature (this is what I did). In Photoshop, go to File>Automate>Contact Sheet II and find the folder in question. Photoshop will create a little contact sheet of the contents that you can then shrink down and include on your 8.5×11 digital kit sheets.
If you wanted to really go for the gusto with digi kit organization, you could create contact sheets of each digital kit and reserve one piece of paper per kit. The downside to that, though, is that takes longer to browse through your digi kit stash. And it uses more paper/ink.
This is a really easy project and definitely worth doing if you haven’t already organized something similar. I’d been meaning to do this project for a year now, but finally sat down and completed it last month and I was surprised how fast it was–it only took an hour or two, and I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner.
