Jump to content

Keeping track of crafty inspiration from around the web


Recommended Posts

My wife is into card making...the kind where you use stamp sets, and cut patterns and emboss and created textures, etc. It's pretty detailed stuff. She has about 100 stamp sets, each may have 3 or 4 or even 10 individual stamps, and it's hard to keep track of what she's got and what to pick for a new project.

So I set her up with Evernote, and took pictures of each of her stamp sets and titled the notes with the name of the set. Now she can browse her sets visually, and easily see which set has a stamp that she wants to use, making it easier and faster to find what she wants.

And after creating the notes, I went through and added keywords to the text of the notes, like Christmas, Birthday, Hearts, Snow, Candles, Borders, Girl, Boy, etc....basically anything that would cause that stamp to be selected. When she searches for a theme or a term, those stamp sets come up.

And of course now she also uses Evernote to take pictures of her finished projects and her friends' and can refer back to them for inspiration and ideas.

  • Like 4
Link to comment

And after creating the notes, I went through and added keywords to the text of the notes, like Christmas, Birthday, Hearts, Snow, Candles, Borders, Girl, Boy, etc....basically anything that would cause that stamp to be selected. When she searches for a theme or a term, those stamp sets come up.

I'm curious... one of my biggest challenges has been figuring out how to fit tagging into my crafty projects/notebooks (How do I keep from having a million different tags?). Do you also use tags or simply rely on the note copy for finding things?

Link to comment

And after creating the notes, I went through and added keywords to the text of the notes, like Christmas, Birthday, Hearts, Snow, Candles, Borders, Girl, Boy, etc....basically anything that would cause that stamp to be selected. When she searches for a theme or a term, those stamp sets come up.

I'm curious... one of my biggest challenges has been figuring out how to fit tagging into my crafty projects/notebooks (How do I keep from having a million different tags?). Do you also use tags or simply rely on the note copy for finding things?

In this case, I don't use tags. The note is an image, followed by all the terms in text that I could think of that I would want a search to find. It would be too easy to create an unwieldy number of tags, and it's actually a lot slower to add many tags to one note. It's also slower to find and select a tag than to just type a word in search.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

In this case, I don't use tags. The note is an image, followed by all the terms in text that I could think of that I would want a search to find. It would be too easy to create an unwieldy number of tags, and it's actually a lot slower to add many tags to one note. It's also slower to find and select a tag than to just type a word in search.

Yeah. I would have at most 2 tags for this use case. "Craft" and "StampSet".

Link to comment

As far as tagging goes it depends on they type of craft and how I want to keep track of it. I have a stack for scrapbooking, one for printables on the web, and one for other crafts like quilting and sewing. For my cross stitch stuff it is all in one notebook and tagged by category like Americana, angels, flowers, christmas, etc. In my scrapbooking stack I have notebooks for page ideas, project life, quotes, and sketches. The page ideas and sketches are tagged by the number of photos in the layouts. There is no right or wrong way to go about using evernote. You just have to do what works for you.

Link to comment

True, you have to come up with something that works for you. In this case, with stamp sets each having 4 or 5 or sometimes even a dozen keywords, making tags for them would have resulted in something like 500 tags. That's just overwhelming and not useful. With the keywords in the note, you just select the Stamp Set notebook (to limit the search to Stamp sets) and then type the keyword you're looking for in the search box....like "frog" or "snowflake" or "car" or "flower" , etc...and it returns exactly what you need.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

True, you have to come up with something that works for you. In this case, with stamp sets each having 4 or 5 or sometimes even a dozen keywords, making tags for them would have resulted in something like 500 tags. That's just overwhelming and not useful. With the keywords in the note, you just select the Stamp Set notebook (to limit the search to Stamp sets) and then type the keyword you're looking for in the search box....like "frog" or "snowflake" or "car" or "flower" , etc...and it returns exactly what you need.

I agree. I'm not crafty. Well, I'm crafty but I'm not craft-y. :P I think people new to Evernote tend to overtag. I did. But the EN search engine is very powerful & I find accurate titles & keywords can reduce the number of tags.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

Jeff510, that is brilliant! I know I'm responding to an old thread, but I haven't been to the user forums until today. Thank you for sharing your excellent use of Evernote to store images of stamps as a virtual catalog of the collection! I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that ages ago because it seems like such a simple "of course!" solution. Thank you for sharing your idea. I love it and will be implementing that in my out-of-control craft studio.

Link to comment
  • 3 months later...

I am also using Evernote to organize my crafting activities.  I have recently been learning to knit and crochet and I set up a note book in EN called "Knitting" and in there I store free patterns I find or that are shared with me online, as well as links to instructional videos or websites I have found helpful.  

 

Once I start completing some projects I also plan to store photos of my finished works in there.  So far the only thing I have done is a Christmas scarf and I have that on facebook, but will eventually have a portfolio of my creations in Evernote as well.  

 

The possibilities are endless!

Link to comment

I just wanted to pop in to say that since I've start using Evernote a few months ago, I've also starting tracking my craft projects with it. 

 

I originally started looking for notetaking software to help with memory issues and am finding it so useful to keep track of pretty much anything one can think of!  It is difficult to shift my thinking from years of relying on Windows folders, but one thing I really like about Evernote is that if my computer up and dies I don't have to worry losing all of my data.  Especially since I've gotten really bad...okay lazy...about making back-up copies of all my data. :D  After having picked up two particularly viscious computer viruses in the span of two months, I learned, or rather re-learned, that it's not a good idea to rely on merely hoping your security software catches every dang thing.  It was a most expensive and infuriating way to be reminded of a very basic computer rule... :angry:  :rolleyes:

Link to comment
  • 2 years later...

I am starting to use Evernote to inventory all of my stamps and would like to also add an inspiration photo of a card or idea  to the note.  However, when I do this, Evernote picks up that image as the "lead" for the note and my image of the actual set, while still in the note, is not visible in the preview.  Is there a way to avoid this so the stamp image is always the preview/main image?

 

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...
  • 5 months later...
  • 2 years later...
  • Level 5*
1 hour ago, salmino said:

 have notebooks for page ideas, project life, quotes, and sketches. The page ideas and sketches are tagged by the number of photos in the layouts.

I prefer a file cabinet notebook with notes flagged for "page ideas, project life, quotes, and sketches."

Just wondering how you use the "number of photos" tag.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...