Getting all of my ducks in a row

I've been dyeing fabrics for over, oh my, 18 years now & I was taught to keep "recipe cards" of my dye swatches so if I ever wanted to go back & recreate that color again, I would have that recipe to do so (like you see in the first photo). I have always kept them in one of those photo albums that holds 2-4"by6" photos per sheet, but I've constantly had problems with these. I couldn't put many swatch cards in an album because of the card & swatch thickness. The album wouldn't stand up on a book shelf very well & those sleeves that held the cards were so flimsy they would slip out of the binder rings too easily, so I've been searching for a new way to display my recipes.

I came across a company a year or so ago that made these small binders that would hold 6-2"by2" swatches for quilters but I thought they were expensive for what their purpose was so I came up with my own plan. I purchased my sleeves (2nd photo) from a company that sold coin supplies. These are acid free sheets that hold 12-2.5"by2.5" squares. I thought it was a great idea (although I'm sure others have already come across this as well) Since I work in a lot of different types of fibers, I thought it would be great to see how one recipe works on different fabrics & that it could all be see at once in one of these sheets & what's also nice, if I'm looking for a red, but not sure what shade, I have up to 12 different options to view at one time. Now to convert all of my old swatch cards into the new format. Think I'll save that for a rainy day when I feel the need to "organize" something.