First I want to say that I don't have everything in my books cut out, it is an ongoing project. But to give you a little background on me, I had a stroke almost 20 years ago and have one hand that doesn’t work well anymore.
When I found that I could still fussy cut, I bought the first Fairies book and started fussy cutting everything in the book, except the small images.
That is when I remembered that I could have my ScanNCut do a lot of the cutting for me – mainly the smaller images. That works well for the images that are on white backgrounds. If the image is on a background that has a pattern on it, like a light halo or the page has a light pattern on it, the ScanNCut can’t see just the image, and those I have to fussy cut.
When the Fairies in Bloom book came out, I started fussy cutting those as well. That was when I realized that there might be a problem with fussy cutting everything because now, I have fairies, flowers, and other images.
So, I bought some 8.75x6.25-inch clear bins at the Dollar Tree – I labeled the bins and sorted the images I already fussy cut into the bins.
Within those bins, I have snack size baggies that hold things like small images under 2 inches tall, another with images between 2 and 4 inches tall, etc. This makes it easier for me to find what I want quickly.
But then I needed to do something with the background images. Solution for the backgrounds at first was clear document envelopes.
As time went on and more books came out; I was getting frustrated with going through the books to find the images I wanted. I had to figure out a new way to do things.
Now, when I got a new book, I made a new clear document envelope (or envelopes) take the book apart and sort the pages into the envelopes. I put the main images – houses, flowers, etc into one envelope and sorted by theme and the other images into envelopes labeled by those types of images. After that, say for instance I needed a flower that wasn’t already fussy cut, I could pull out the “flowers” pocket and go through that to find what I want.
I bought 2 clear file boxes – one for backgrounds and one for the images.
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I need things to be visible and easily accessible so I can find what I want easily, so this works for me. I wasn’t always this way, but after I had my stroke (almost 20 years ago) I found that I needed things in my studio organized so that they are easy to find.
UPDATE, AUGUST 2025:
By August 2025, I knew that I had to find a better way to find the images rather than having two file boxes sitting on top of a short bookcase. So, I bought a small rolling handing folder file cabinet. The top drawer holds the folders of images to be cut out, sorted by theme and the bottom holds all my background images.
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As of August 2025, I reorganized and re-labeled all the bins and color coded them to make it easier for me to see the bins I use most.
Currently, I have over 40 clear bins and over 40 hanging file folders. I am sure those numbers are only going to get bigger as Marta releases more books.
Suggestions and comments are always welcome.
See you soon!
Judy