Hi All,

I know that the idea of using a binder to house your AL samples has been discussed before, but I just wanted to report how happy I am that I finally followed that advice.

I wasn't able to find slide sheet holders, but found trading card holders instead (at Office Max) They work like a dream...

Here's a pic:



Thought this might be a help to those that are new or to those whose samples are overflowing.

Cheers!
-Melissa

I just got my slide holders in the mail today, and now I can't decide how to organize my samples. How did you organize yours? By colour? By collection?

I went by color: purples, browns, greens, light highlight colors, etc.

Except for this page: I put these Rocks! together. Glam glitters at the top and the others below. (but they are sort of color coded.

They are really nice and handy. The only problem is I have so many full sizes, I rarely open my binder. I have them sitting close at hand, just in case I can't find the color I'm looking for.

As far as eye pigments, I have mine mostly organized by color. All my Eye Plush collection samples are together.

Sometimes I forget to go through it before I place an order and I really should.

Thanks for the pic!

The slide sheets are a bit harder to find, but I like them because you can fit 20 colors on a page instead of only 9 I found them at Staples on clearance about a year ago; I'm not sure if they're still in the stores but I'm pretty sure you can find them online somewhere. Search for "35 mm slide protectors" or something like that.

I definitely organize my binder by color -- I figure that when I'm getting ready in the morning, I always think to myself, "I want to wear purple today, so which purple should I use?" and I can turn to the purple page. I never think to myself, "I want to wear a Lustre today, which Lustre should I use?" to organize by collection

However, like you, I've now got enough full sizes that I don't reach for my sample binder very often! So sad since there's a ton of great colors in that binder being neglected!

I just organized my sample binder for the first time tonight. It took me two and a half hours (I have a lot of samples), and that was just me organizing by collection (I was lazy and didn't want to organize by colour - it's hard for me to tell what some of the colours are...). So anyway, after I organized it, I did a little bit of decoration. I basically made a coversheet that said, "Michelle's AromaLeigh Sample Binder" (yes, my real name is Michelle, but I go by Anna online), and then I found my favorite picture of Ophelia done by Millais, and pasted that to the bottom of the coversheet.

Maybe when I am feeling less lazy, I will organize by colour. Oh! I also organized by face, cheek, eyes, lips, and extras (my duplicate colours went into the extras section).

It felt like a big project, and I still don't feel I am done.

Melissa, looks good!

There's pros/cons to both....if you have all your pinks together and you want a pink, just open to that page(s) and you can see all you have. The downside is if you're looking to see if you have a particular shade it takes a bit longer to find. If you organize by collection, you can easily see which shades in that collection you have, but it's harder if you want to look at all your shades in that color family.

I had mine by color, then ended up switching to by collection because every time a collection went on sale, it'd take me forever to flip through the binder and figure out what I didn't already have.

Duplicates I usually stick behind each other, or put in a little ziplock baggie that's tucked into the front pocket.

I see Miss K just posted Cin's binder on her blog!

I know you can't fit as many samples per page with the trading card size (a con for sure), but it sure is easy to put them in and to easily tuck in duplicates (a pro.)

I still haven't worked out if I like the way I have them sorted. I can see how it is hard to figure out the sorting. Cin raised some great points about organizing "issues." I figure I will work that out in time, and that there's not one right way to do that.

I primarily use samples at this point. They last me a long time and allow me to play around without committing to a FS until I know a color is a "keeper."

I have a huge sample binder that I organize by collection, because I am a total collector at this point. However within each collection I organize by color, if it is a bigger collection, like Rocks. I think I may ned to buy another sample binder just for LE collections though because I can barely get mine to close.

I love paging through it!

Maybe we all need TWO binders, one by color and one by collection?

When you store your samples in your binder, do you turn them sideways in the slots? Or do you store them vertically? When you look at them in the slots are they sideways or right ways up?

I use collectible card pages (like for Pokemon and stuff) and store my colors with the tops up. I do this so that it's easy to read the color name on the bag.

I see what you mean, Zhariel. I bought slide sheets, so I have more colours to a page, and the slots are smaller. I'm not sure which way I like best yet.

I am, however, getting very frustrated with organization. I'm organizing by collection, but I also want to organize by colour within each collection. For some reason, I am having trouble doing this. I wish there were a cheat sheet that was more simple than sitting at the computer with the shop by colour page open and flipping back and forth between each page and such. Ugh. Someone come do this for me! I'll pay you!

I use the slide sheets and I fold the ziplock seal under and slide the baggies in sideways. You can also have the samples right-side up if you don't mind the top of the sample baggies sticking up out of the slot (or if you can fold them over and still get them to slide in the slot!) I find it's easier to slide them in the slots sideways since the ziplock seal makes them more "stiff".

Anna -- the samples all have the name of the collection on the bag, right? So that makes it easy to sort by collection. For sorting by color, why not just eyeball it? That's all I do -- for some of those in-between colors (e.g. a pinkish-purple) I just arbitrarily choose to put it on either the pink or purple page, but someone else may choose to put it on the other page -- as long as I know where it is, it's fine with me! Also, some colors look different on my skin than in the sample baggie so I order them by how they look on me -- e.g. Arielle looks lavender on me (due to the purple shimmer) but looks taupe in the bag, so I put it on the purple page.

quote:

Originally posted by girl_geek:

Anna -- the samples all have the name of the collection on the bag, right? So that makes it easy to sort by collection. For sorting by color, why not just eyeball it? That's all I do -- for some of those in-between colors (e.g. a pinkish-purple) I just arbitrarily choose to put it on either the pink or purple page, but someone else may choose to put it on the other page -- as long as I know where it is, it's fine with me! Also, some colors look different on my skin than in the sample baggie so I order them by how they look on me -- e.g. Arielle looks lavender on me (due to the purple shimmer) but looks taupe in the bag, so I put it on the purple page.

Yeah. I had no problem sorting by collection. I just put them into the binder as I unwrapped them from the envelope that they came in - straight from the mail into the binder. I think part of the reason why this is feeling so complicated to me is because I am dealing with almost all of the collections. I should be getting elemental lustres and mattes this week and then the rocks! eyeshadows and glitters sometime after that. I didn't buy a big enough binder for my samples. It's already quite full.

I think that my biggest challenge now, beyond organization, is going to be choosing which colours to wear.

I really like sorting by collection, since it helps me learn all the collections

I had mine sorted by color originally, but after my collection grew to an enormous size, I reorganized them by collection.

When I had them organized by color, every time I purchased a new eyeshadow sample, I had to shift all of the samples to make room for the new one. I should have left a blank page (or at least some empty pockets) at the end of each color section to allow for new additions.

But now that they're organized by collection, there are usually a few empty slots at the end of the section. Plus, it's easier to see which colors I already own when things go on sale.

That is a good point about re-organizing .... I do have to reorganize once I get more than 20 samples in one color family; however, most of my pages have a few open slots because I make sure each page has similar colors, and I don't try to fill in any gaps with another color. E.g. if I have 17 green eyeshadows, I'm not going to fill the remaining three slots with, say, 3 blue-green eyeshadows -- I'll leave them empty for new green shadows and put all my blue-green shadows on a separate page. Even within a page I will leave open spots -- e.g. there are 4 slots in one row, so if I have 3 pale pink shadows and my other pink shadows are all darker, I'll put the 3 pale pink shadows on one row then leave the last slot empty for a future pale pink shadow.

I have a bunch of extra sheets so when a page does fill up, I add an empty page next to it then split it up -- e.g. I have more than 20 purple samples, so I split them up into muted purples (e.g Persephone, taupey-purples like Arielle, many of the old Le Mysteres) and bright/bold purples (e.g. stillinhollywood, Purple Princess).

But of course to each their own -- I'm just trying to share different ideas

But I also think it would be fun to sort by collection so you can easily see what colors you have and don't have. Maybe we should all just buy TWO samples of every color so we can have a color-sorted binder and a colletion-sorted binder

Wow! That sounds like a lot of work Girl_Geek! I don't know if I could do it.

I just discovered that the $11 3" binder that I bought for all of my samples is way too small. Considering I will have samples from all the collections (except for the drama liners) by the end of next week, I probably should have bought the $14 4" binder. Oh the woes of an AL addict!

quote:

Originally posted by Veridienne:
Wow! That sounds like a lot of work Girl_Geek! I don't know if I could do it.

It was only a lot of work when I first organized the binder. Now it just takes a few minutes to add any new samples -- of course I never buy more than 20-some samples at a time now (i.e. one LE collection) so there's usually only one or two new samples to add to each page

But just do whatever works for you -- I'm just sharing what works for me!