Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Organizing paper


Organizing Paper



]I love to organize. I also love paper, from notebook paper to colored cardstock to Patterned Papers. I especially love all the specialty papers available to scrapbookers now. Hence, I have quite the collection of paper at my house. \.
Recently I searched through my huge stack of Patterned Paper for I'm not sure what, and realized I was lost. I had tons of wonderful Patterned Paper that was disorganized. I had invested over $hundreds of dollars$ in my paper collection and didn't even know what I had.
Here are four easy steps to organize your paper pile.
First, label the manila file folders with color names in rainbow order. Write each name on two folders (one for cardstock and one for Patterned Paper). Rainbow order is white, cream, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, and black. Add more folders if you have another color you know you have a lot of, if you want to further sort your blues or greens, or if you have a lot of holiday or multicolored Patterned Papers, etc.
Second, place one manila folder in each hanging folder.
Third, after your folders are labeled, sort your cardstock into the appropriate manila folders.
Last, sort your Patterned Papers into the coordinating folders as well. Now you should have all your papers (both plain cardstock and patterned) organized by color or theme into manila folders in a hanging file (or two or three files). So, stand up, stretch, and get a big drink of water, you're doing great and the fun part is about to begin!
Here's where you learn those organized shopper skills. Take each piece of Patterned Paper and find one or two coordinating colors of cardstock from your files. If you can't find cardstock to match, put the paper in a sheet protector and place it in Binder #1. This is the binder you will consult the next time you shop to find coordinating cardstock for all those unmatched papers. However, once you have matched a piece of Patterned Paper with enough cardstock for a one- to two-page layout, place that collection into a page protector and put it into Binder #2. Repeat this process with each of your Patterned Papers. I started with the pinks and went through each color folder of Patterned Papers. I filled three 3" D-ring binders, and had another 1" binder full of papers with no cardstock. When you are finished, your binder(s) will be a rainbow display of perfectly matched papers, all ready and waiting for your wonderful photos!
When shopping in the future, every time you add a piece of Patterned Paper to your basket, make sure to add enough coordinating cardstock to mat your photos and/or use as your background so that you're never caught again with paper you can't use. Allowing enough paper for a two-page layout is always a smart way to shop. Also, make sure you have enough of each pattern to complete your future pages, since dye lots of papers change, and papers are discontinued.

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