Organising Dies

I’ve been quiet on the crafting side recently as I decided that I really needed to organise. I had 4 different places to look if I wanted a particular die. There was a folder where the dies were not in any sort of order, just shoved in where there was room. This is not conducive to easy and fun crafting. So I thought to change that, and it has been a lot bigger job than I first imagined.

I always do research before any big project and was curious to find out how other people stored their dies. A big thank you to members of the Hunkydorables Facebook group for all their useful suggestions. I finally decided on sticking 2 sheets of the magnetic sheet onto a card so that I would have sturdy double-sided magnetic sheets.

I used 240 gsm card, mainly colours that I wasn’t planning to use anytime soon. Using normal double sided sticky tape I taped up the card. This particular pattern of tape does surprisingly work.

After removing the tape, I very carefully laid the magnetic sheet on top of the card. However, the first time I did that I stuck down the wrong side. So since then I always kept a die out to check that I was sticking down the non-magnetic side of the die.

It doesn’t quite matter if the magnetic sheet is not perfectly aligned. I then did the same on the other side of the card, again remembering to check with a die the magnetic sheet. After that, if needed I cut the sheet in half with a ruler and a craft knife.

I needed a lot of these sheets, and it took a very long time. I decided to accurately label all my dies so that I could refer to them by name in future. To do this I used Century Gothic size 12 on Word, and then printed on 160 gsm card. I used the Cutterpillar Pro to cut all the labels, I even got my husband involved in this part of the organisation. The Cutterpillar made the job so much quicker than if I had used my old cutter.

I ended up with 2 zipped Xcut folders, one for shapes and sentiments, the other for concept cards and things.

After helping me sort out all my dies, my husband has decided to do a pdf file of photos of all the dies in each folder. Mainly so that I can see what I have quickly, and so that I don’t buy something similar that I really don’t need.

So now I can craft a bit easier. Next job will be the organisation of all my stamps, gulp.