International Scrapbooking Day is this weekend! Are you ready? It can get intense as so many stores and designers offer such great deals plus games and freebies…it’s a lot! To help get ready, here’s a list of things you can do before the weekend hits so you can calmly and confidently sort through the deluge of digital scrapbooking sales.

First up, we need to do some initial prep work:

• Make a list of some upcoming projects.
  Will you be continuing with Project Life? Do you have a big event coming up like a graduation or a wedding?
• Review your current stash.
  It’s always good to know what you have before you go shopping. Also, can you delete anything old or unloved?
• Clean out your downloads folder.
  Give your fresh digiscrap kits a nice, clean new temporary home.
• Set a budget.
  Hahahahaha…LOL…heeheehee…just kidding.
  

Now we get down to some business:

• Make a list of your favorite digital scrapbooking stores.
  • Add any older items you might like to your shopping cart or wish list.
  • Register for their online forums. And follow them on your preferred social media site like Facebook or Instagram.
  • Note any advertised sales as they are announced.
    
• Make a list of your favorite digiscrap designers.
  • Bookmark their blogs or add them to a feed reader like Feedly or Bloglovin.
  • Subscribe to their email list. And follow them on social media. (You can subscribe to my list right here!)
  • Make a note of their store and group designers by shop.
  • Note any advertised sales as they are announced.
    
• Now prioritize these lists! Make a top 3 or 5 to make it manageable.

What to do the day of INSD:

Who are we kidding. INSD is not just a day or a weekend, it’s at least a week and it’s started already (check out the Lilypad bloghop-link updated for the 2022 hop!) Just try to keep up and refer to your list often to help you focus. Here are a few day-of tips:

• Review your shopping carts and wish lists in the morning to see if anything you placed in there is on sale. If not, delete it (or keep it, I don’t know where you set your budget).
• Check your email for sales from your designer list. Add items to your cart.
• Review the store forums for any exclusive offers.
• Browse social media for any other sale info but don’t spend too much time there…it’s a deep deep hole and you’ll lose track of time and just don’t.
• Check out! Keep track of all those download emails and work your way through them until all your purchases are in your downloads folder…or scattered across your desktop.
• While you’re waiting for things to download, check out the store forums and see if there are any games or other activities you want to join in on.

What to do next week:

• Unzip all your purchases and sort them. Sahin Designs has some good tips in this blog post. Get them out of your downloads folder at least!
• I like to add a “- – -” in front of a new kit file name so I know it’s new and I haven’t used it yet. I use three dashes and then each time I use a kit, I delete one dash. Once all the dashes are gone, and I’m fairly certain I won’t use it again, I delete it.
• Review the weekend’s emails and download any freebies you may have missed. I only subscribe to the emails of my favorite designers and I only download their freebies…makes my email and my scrap stash stay semi-sane.

What are your tips? Seriously, what I have I missed?? And which stores and designers will you be following this weekend? I’ll list my favorites in the comments too!