Organizing Templates

Happy first day of August!!!  I swear the summer is passing by so much quicker than the school year!  Can we slow it down just a bit? 😊

Well I’m CTM Robin and I’ve been using my summer to scrap and organize my supplies.  I thought I’d share a way I organize all my templates so they are easy to find when I have limited time to scrap and I need to make the most of it.  So how do I do that?  I organize all my templates into file folders based on the number of photo spots they have.  I know, I know – it sounds crazy but let me show you what I mean.  Here is a snapshot of some of my folders.

 Can you see how I have them numbered?  Let me show you a close up view of the folder with templates having space for three photos.

See what I mean?  Now whenever I have picked out my photos and sit down to scrap, I don’t have search through ALL my templates to find the perfect one.  I have a great place to start.  Did I say a place to start??  What do I mean??  WELL, just because I have five photos, I don’t ONLY look in the folder with five place holders.  I also can look in the one with four photos and simply add another spot.  See, this is what I did in this layout.

I used a template from Simple & Sweet Life Templates 8.  I really liked a template, but it only had room for four photos.  I just used the date circle for another one. Easy peasy!!  Tiffany did the same thing, only she added THREE more photos to the template from Recyclables 58.

 Now clearly you don’t have to only ADD photos, you can take one away too!  Look at Ellen’s layout here:

Using Sweet & Simple Life Templates 7, she filled one photo spot with a journaling card.


We all know that we can add photos or remove spots from Liz’s templates since they are so versatile.  But I wanted to show you that you can organize your templates so you can easily find them when it’s time to scrap.  I always start off with a file that matches my number photos, and then I look at the ones with more spots if I have some fun journal cards to use, or folders with less spots if I can’t find something that just calls to me.  I have found that by limiting myself to only perusing through a few folders, I don’t spend too long poking through ALL my templates. 

Now that you know my secret, what do YOU do to organize your stash??  Inquiring minds want to know 😊