3 Reasons it's better to catalog by number

There are many ways to create a catalog for your dies – you can create a catalog based on brand, designer, theme, sentiment, size, holiday…but without a numbering system for locating your dies, finding them may not be any easier.  To learn how to create a catalog for your dies using Tiffany’s system, read her post – Creating a Catalog for Dies.

ONE – As I mentioned above, the best reason to catalog using numbers is the simplicity of quickly finding the die you’re looking for.  If you store all of your Christmas dies in a binder labeled Christmas without any sort of numbering system, you’ll still need to flip through every page in your Christmas binder until you “spot” the die you are looking for.

TWO – Dies don’t always look like what they produce.  Sentiment dies are a great example – they may appear backwards when you’re looking at the die itself, plus if they’ve got borders that surround the words, the correct border for each word can be difficult to identify.

Perhaps the biggest reason…

THREE – Storing things by theme requires that you are regularly “re-arranging” your dies to include new additions to your collection.

If you’ve got a die storage binder for Christmas and it is completely full, when you buy a new Christmas die you’ll also need to add another binder/box etc.

The majority of this new binder will be empty until you purchase enough dies to fill it. You would need binders for Easter, Summer, Travel…depending on how many dies you own, you might have an entire shelf of binders that were partially full.

If you create a catalog and store the dies numerically, you can fill your storage tools to capacity and then add a second, third, fourth…as needed, filling each to capacity before you add the next.  You’ll save money, space and time.

A few more reasons to use a catalog…

Catalogs show your full collection at a glance.

If you’re in search of a specific die for Christmas, and you flip to the Christmas section of your catalog, you’re also going to see the other Christmas dies in your collection.  There may be a better option that you had forgotten about or there may be a second die that would work well with the first.

Catalogs allow you to add details.

Nesting dies are fun to use, but finding the perfect size or distance between 2 sizes can require you to measure each time you want to use them.  With a catalog, you can easily note the sizes of each of the dies in a set and/or the distance between each size on the catalog.

Catalogs are portable.

Hauling your entire die collection to a crafting event could be quite cumbersome and heavy.  However, if you bring your catalog and a little stack of sticky notes, you can choose the dies you’ll use while you’re at the event, but actually add them to your project when you get home.  No need to haul dies, platforms, or machines to an event.

Catalogs simplify shopping.

If you’re shopping for dies, either on the internet or at a store, being able to flip through the sections in your catalog will help you choose dies that complement, rather than duplicate the dies you already own.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  Getting your dies organized and accessible will help you use them more!! Taking the time to create a catalog will certainly pay off in how often you actually use your dies.

Happy Crafting,