...I decided to organize all my dies. I did not realize what a huge undertaking this would be! I've lost three full days of my life doing this! I must say though....It was really worth it!!
Have you ever gone looking for something only to finally find what you are looking for at the end of the pile, or worse yet, going thru it twice cuz you missed it the first time? Can we say....
Time waster! Frustrating! Daunting if you have a lot of dies!
Well, no more! I came up with an idea a while back to put my dies into 3 ring mini binders. I wanted to try it for a while before committing to it to see if it would work.
So I made a few binders with only some of my dies and tried it for a month. It dramatically cut down on my time searching for dies. It worked so good, that I decided to tackle the rest of my collection.
I found the perfect (for me) binder by "Pen + Gear". Its a good size. Not too big so as to be heavy when loaded, but not too small as not to hold enough dies! They also make the clear protector shields to fit these binders.
Hopefully this all makes sense. I started with a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of card stock scored at 1" from the bottom. To the front I glued the cover of the die package. If that wasn't available, I used an actual die cut out. This was so that from either side of the page, I could see which die set was in the sleeve.
To the back side of the card stock I glued a magnet sheet large enough to hold the dies. I folded at the score line towards the back of the page. This will catch a die in case it slips off the magnet.
I then put this into the protective sleeve. I found out (the hard way), the pages could/would slip out of the rings sometimes, so I used ring protectors on the holes. This stopped that problem.
I made my own tab sheets to divide the books into categories. You can purchase them if you don't want to make them.
Each book has different themes. For example...
One book holds only pop-up die sets. This particular book has a table of contents page, and 5 tab pages. The tab pages are labeled A-E and I used them to sub-divide, to ease looking for certain sets. On the table of contents page, I can then list which dies are in certain tab sections.
Another book contains circles, squares, rectangles, etc. This book just has tabs separating the different types of dies.
Yet another book is divided by months for holidays.
Basically you can divide and sub divide however works best for you.
Here they are, all lined up on a shelf... Notice how I have a removable label on the spines. This allows for change as your collection expands.
I even dedicated a book to all the components, and templates to make more sleeves.
I must say....I had WAY more dies than I had at first realized, and this project took longer than expected, BUT...I am so glad that I took the time to do this!
I found most of the supplies at Walmart:
Pen + Gear 1"Mini binders
Pen + Gear Mini sheet protectors
3 ring hole reinforcements
I found these items at Staples:
Heavy weight card stock (for tabs and sheets.)
Post it Note removable label tape
Happy crafting everyone!
ttfn: Karen
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