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For those of you who are stamping your sets and putting the images in a binder. How are you sorting them? What catagories do you use in your binder to find the sets. What's the easiest way? Number the sets? Then sort by category in binder? I'm trying to find the best way so I will use the sets I forgot about. I not only have about 50 SU sets. I also have Club Scrap, CTMH and other companies as well to sort. I need major organization help as I can't seem to find my sets when I need them and I can't remember what I have! As you buy more do you just assign it the next number and then put stamped page in your binder by category? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all your help.
I am fortunate to have a room dedicated to my crafts...so plenty of space to have my sets on shelves. I have them sorted by the size of the box, the smallest are "A" size and the largest are "E" size. I put the sets on the shelves alphabetically.
In my binder I have the pages with the stamped images in sections, A through E. I flip through my binder for inspiration, then go to the coordinating shelf to pull the set I want to use.
I know that some stampers organize their binders by theme, season, holiday, and so on. Others organize their binders according to the categories in the SU catalog.
I don't cross reference. I have the set Animal Valentines. On my shelf, it's in Holidays. So, that's where I put it in my binder. That way I know where to find it when I've looked it up in my binder. I don't have to wonder which one it's in... animals or holidays.
Also, when I have an inspiration sheet, I just use that instead of stamping images on printer paper.
I have mine in categories (like jen70 has) and those categories are colour coded. I made up labels with the set's name, year and # in set (and my name) so that it fits into the SU! storage case (or I tape it to the side of my other sets). This label is colour coded to match my categories AND the name of the set is BIGGER so I can clearly see it.
In my binder, I have 2 sections. One has an index sheet for each set. The category is indicated in colour on that sheet. The other is for cross referencing images and verses. That is, I've got a page with images of angels from all my stamps... baby themed stamps...sentiments...thank you's...etc. Under the image is the name of the set where it came from.
I have just finished cataloguing my stamps (I'm still relatively new to stamping, so I probably don't have nearly as many as most of you, but already I am running out of room...(doesn't take long does it? LOL!)
I have purchased all kinds of see-through plastic bins, including two of those rolling carts that holds several 12x12" clear boxes. I put my stamps in according to subject until I ran out of boxes, that's when everthing else went into a 'Miscellaneous bin' I numbered each drawer and bin. Then I went through all of my stamps and stamped them as many times as I thought necessary for cross-referencing. I also stamped each set on one card, then stamped the individual pieces on it's own card (I used unlined recipe cards to do this..and store them in a 3-ring photo holder) As an example: 'Tags and More' has flowers, a snowman, bunny, dragonfly, candles, leaf, and a To/From tag. I stamped all 8 of these onto a 4x6 inch recipe card. Then I stamped each of the stamps on it's own smaller recipe card. Should I want to sub-catagorize the bunny, for instance. I would stamp that onto TWO separate recipe cards and file one under Easter and one under Animals. Then I wrote the box/drawer # each was stored in. It was time consuming, but now that it's done, it's working great!
I use categories too. In my book, a set such as "Lovely As a Tree" is listed under Trees - the page right after Train and before Wedding. But "Toile Blossoms" goes in the category with all the flowers. Anything related to babies goes on the Baby page. Then comes Birthdays, and next Bunnies
One section is for just words and phrases. A separate section for Bible verses.
HTH
This categorizing is dangerous. I have a few retired sets that had no names on them. In order to find the names I had to look through old catalogs and of course fell in love with older sets that I just had to have. E-bay here I come! Anyway, I have all the sets numbered and in my filing cabinet. I stamped only 5 sets so far. This idea of sorting in a binder is great but of course you need to have the sets mounted in order to do this. So not only did I stamp some sets I wound up mounting some as some of mine have never been mounted because of lack of time. I have almost 40 sets now just in SU stamps. I'm going to be very happy once this is all set up so I can start stamping and using the stuff I already have.
Those using books for organizing stamp sets????
