Are you excited yet? Digital Scrapbook Day is this weekend - are you ready? Yesterday Neisha posted about where you can find all the DSD excitement here at DigiShopTalk. Today I’m here to give you a few tips for organizing your weekend, including ways to keep track of your wishlists, coupons, chat schedules, and more.
Graphics created by Erin Kay Studio
You might already use Pinterest to track your digital scrapbooking (and everything else!) wish lists; if not, now’s a great time to jump in! I plan to create a few new boards just for DSD. Your needs might be different from mine, but here’s what I’m starting with:
- My DSD Wish List
- DSD Products I Bought or Won
- DSD Games, Activities, and Sales (to pin advertising graphics for these events)
ScrapStacks
If you prefer your visual scrapbooking inspiration uncluttered by hairdo pictures, random architectural images, and yummy-but-distracting recipes, ScrapStacks is your answer. Founded by designer Penny Springmann, everything on ScrapStacks is scrapbook-related.
You can only “Stack” (similar to pinning) your own work (layouts, kits, tutorials you wrote, cards, hybrid projects, etc.), but you can re-Stack anything that’s already there. Meaning, you can “shop” ScrapStacks and build your own DSD wish list! Many designers are already stacking their designs.
This would also be an excellent place to share all your DSD layouts. Check the ScrapStacks blog for more information and tips on how to use this fabulous new site.
Evernote Web Clipper
Evernote, and especially its handy Web Clipper, makes quick work of compiling coupons, challenges you want to participate in, sales you want to remember, and more. After installing the Web Clipper bookmarklet for your browser (it’s available for Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer), you’ll see a little elephant icon near your address bar. Click that to save whole web pages or select some text first to save a little snippet, as in my example.
For example, you could save all coupons in a Note titled “DSD Coupons,” create another note for contests entered, and another one to track purchases and whether or not you’ve downloaded/unzipped files.
Google Calendar
Of course, you can use any calendar service, but I recommend entering all chat times, sale and contest deadlines, and other time-sensitive activities in a calendar. An electronic calendar especially makes it easier to spot potential conflicts. I simply created a new Google calendar for myself titled “DSD Activities.” Now all my DSD activities show up in their own color to distinguish them from my other appointments.
DownThemAll, Download Master, and ExtractNow
Post-shopping-frenzy, how do you manage all the files? With a couple of helper programs, you can get the dirty work done faster and get on to scrapping with your new goodies. DownThemAll is a Firefox-only extension that allows you to manage and download all links from a page at once. It provides easy pause-and-restart ability, increases download speed, and is fully integrated into your browser so it doesn’t feel like a separate program. Download Master does the same thing for Chrome browsers.
After you download all your zip files, it’s time to quickly unzip. Drag and drop everything into ExtractNow, click Extract, and watch the magic happen. You can customize the settings to determine where files are unzipped to, whether to keep or toss zip files after successful unzipping, and more.
I hope you’re all prepared for this weekend! Remember to check DST’s special DSD 2012 Forum for all the latest sales, announcements, and chatting fun. Do you have any more tips, tricks, and hints for staying on top of all the fun? Please share with us!
These are great ideas. Love the electronic calendar to organize all the chats and speed scraps! Thanks!