Monday, May 13, 2013

Clip Art Hoarder: Quick organizational strategies

In addition to SLP materials hoarding, I've recently been diagnosed as a clip art hoarder.  This is in keeping with my long tradition of overpurchasing my craft-of-the-moment.

I've got stickers, fancy papers, and a CRICUT from my scrapbooking days.

I went through a phase of trying out crafts by purchasing kids kits.  I've got a mosaic tile kit, a half completed knitting project AND a loom to make a rainbow scarf.  Do you know ANYONE who buys themselves a loom?  Well, you do now.

I started beading and have amassed 3 Ikea File cabinets filled with Beads and project ideas.  I have a BIG rubbermaid container filled with jewelry I made when I was going to start selling my jewelry at local craft fairs.  I did one.  I sat outside for 10 hours and made 11.75.  So now they just sit in the tub until it is someone's birthday or there is a benefit.

So, it's not surprising that when I would start to hoard clip art too.  I buy most of my clip art on Etsy and sometimes I buy a whole packet because I need one picture in the group.  But as I've gotten more art, I found it difficult or time consuming to figure out what I had-OR to remember what artist had completed the clip art I was using.  I used to just look in my Etsy purchases-but since some artists run BOGO sales, half of the clip art I'm using doesn't show up.

I needed to come up with a new strategy for organizing clip art.

I store all of my clip art on Dropbox so I can access it from each computer.  When I purchase clip art, I take time to rename each picture or file so that I can easily figure out what it is.

I've made up a "page" in power point for each artist.  I put the thumbnail sketch for each clip art product and also copied the artist's terms of use.

It makes it really easy when I go to complete a product because I can quickly find the artist page and check the terms of use prior to finishing a project.  What organizational strategies do you use?

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