Carousel Information

I went out on the web looking for information on the 7 Gypsies Photo Carousel and couldn't find much, other than ads. However, I have information now! Thanks to a teaching friend of mine and my own experimentation, I now know that:

The idea is to fill the carousel to the point that the center metal portion is not visible when you part the pages to look at a pair of them.

Filling the carousel will take anywhere from 75 to over 100 page protectors, depending on how thick your layouts are. That would be twice that number in finished pages or 150 to over 200 layouts. It can hold a lot of stuff!

A partly filled carousel is tippy and off balance. You can easily add pages, but moving them around isn't always easy. There are ridges to keep the pages from slipping on the clips as you spin. Squishing pages together to add a clump can be tricky.

The larger page protectors are designed to hold the 7 Gypsies clear stamp sheets, but they will work on the photo carousel and hold a 5.5" x 7" layout. That's portrait dimensions, not landscape.

Using layout ideas for 8.5 x 11 pages works well for these pages. The proportions aren't the same, so you can't simply scale down. Just use the general idea.

I have been printing my photos 2-up on a 5" x 7" piece of photo paper and they are a good size for a layout using the larger page protectors.

It is a very good and useful thing to have ribbons, tabs and other decorative pieces stick beyond the page protectors. It becomes very difficult to find anything if you don't. You get lost going around and around.

Since I'm using the clear stamp pages and not the 4 x 6 photo pages, most of the 7 Gypsies 97% finished items, like the calendar pages with tabs or their pre-cut chipboard, are too small. I need to cut my own out of manila folders or chipboard.

I need to allow at least 15" x 15" of flat area to display my finished carousel, and to look impressive it needs more like 20" x 20". It will occupy most of my square coffee table. It will not fit on the average bookshelf, not even with part of pages extending beyond the shelf. If I were using only the 4 x 6 pages, the finished carousel would be much smaller, needing only 12" x 12" of space at a minimum.