Creating an Idea CD

I have hundreds of magazines, dozens of idea books, and I spend hours upon hours online looking for ideas for my scrapbook albums. I often suffer from scrapbook information overload! All of the information I’ve gathered over the past few years is very helpful—if I can find it when I need it.

I used to cut pages out of my magazines and place each page in a page protector in three-ring binders to save ideas I thought I might use again. While that system worked for a while, I found that I quickly accumulated multiple three-ring binders full of information. This system also didn’t include a huge portion of the resources I use on the web.

In order to save space on my shelves, I decided to try creating my own “Idea CD” by saving information to a CD-ROM. (If you have plenty of hard drive space on your computer, you can also use a simple folder structure on your hard drive instead of a CD.) Using my scanner and computer, I’ve developed a system that works and allows me to find the information I’m looking for quickly and easily. While it is time consuming to get started, I’ve found it to be very helpful once the system is in place.

To start my Idea CD, I created a folder structure that made sense for my style of scrapbooking. When I scrapbook, I look for element ideas, rather than theme ideas, so my categories are based on different aspects of scrapbooking rather than page themes. Choose a system that makes sense for you. If you scrap primarily holiday events, it might be more beneficial for you to divide your information by theme rather than element or technique.

Creating folders on a re-writable CD-ROM (so I could continually add information), I use seven main categories:

Layout Design - layouts I particularly liked, sketches for layout design, etc.
Design Tips - tips for choosing colors, how to balance a layout, etc.
Techniques - articles teaching various techniques
Album Ideas - theme albums, gift albums, make your own album, etc.
Journaling Ideas - journaling ideas, articles, and layouts featuring journaling
Organization - ideas for supply storage, organizing scrap rooms, etc.
Photography - photography tips, photo pose ideas, etc.

Once I had determined the main categories, I turned to various resources to start filling up the folders. Magazines, idea books, catalogs, advertisements, and web sites are some of the resources I use frequently.

I began with information found on web sites, simply because it takes the least amount of work. Copying and pasting is much faster than scanning and saving. As I browse various web sites, if I find information that is helpful, I simply save it to the corresponding folder on my CD. For instance, I was particularly interested in an article found online about organizing your supplies. I copied the information, pasted it into a Word document and then saved the document to the CD.

When saving individual layouts from the web, I like to save the image itself, rather than the entire web page, although both methods have benefits and drawbacks. Saving the entire page allows you to keep information about the artist, how it was created, etc.; however it often creates additional files on your CD for each of the images on the web page in order to display it properly (logos, buttons, etc.) I like to browse through the layouts quickly using an image browser so I save them as .jpg files and place them in the appropriate folders.

One benefit of a digital “idea file” is that the same layout can be placed in multiple categories by simply saving it to multiple folders. Since I often like more than one aspect of a page, it’s very helpful to put it in multiple places. Some of the sub-folders within my layout ideas section are:

Title Design
Journaling Design
Borders
Layout Sketches
Photo Corners
Embellishments

Often I’ll save only the portion of the layout that interests me, such as a close up of the photo corner design that someone used, rather than saving the entire page.

You can use the same system for ideas you find in magazines and books. There’s just one extra step—scanning. Scan the pages that interest you and save the files as .jpg images. Whether it’s an entire article or one layout in particular, you’re able to read and view the information on your computer screen and don’t need to save the entire magazine or book.

An Idea CD saves both space and time—space on your shelves which can now be used for more supplies, and time looking for that perfect idea. Now when I’m looking for a unique title design, I simply turn to my Idea CD and look at the folder where I’ve saved some of my favorite ideas.

Article originally printed in the Ivy Cottage Creations May 2004 issue.