Recipe Card Dividers & Binder Cover

Today I finished a project that I've been obsessing about for awhile now. I had already been mulling it over when Erin contacted me and asked me if I was ever going to post digi recipe card dividers for my recipe cards. There's nothing like a little peer pressure to get my butt moving.

My dilemma was how to create the dividers themselves. The set that I originally made for myself took for-EVER and I didn't want to have to go through that process again. I had used chipboard, which had to be covered with scrapbook paper, then the digi divider, then it had to be Modge Podged to within an inch of its life. And then the scrapbook paper still peeled off. Grrr.

It wasn't going to be a helpful solution to anyone, so I had to come up with something else. And I did, and I'm giddy with excitement to finally be able to share it with you today. But before you get your hopes up, it's nothing extraordinary, it's just something that works and doesn't take blinking forever to do.

Come on, let me show you.

First I typed up my divider tab labels in MS Word and printed them out. The font I used was Edwardian Script ITC at 36 pt. I chose this particular paper because a) it wasn't white, and b) I already had it.

I made divider tabs for you in this post, if you don't want to make your own.

The next thing I did, is cut card stock into 6" x 8-1/2" pieces. The card stock is the backing for the divider cards.

Next, I carefully cut out divider tabs. Each tab was 3" long x 3/4" deep, cut on the 8-1/2" x 11" side of the card stock piece. Cutting out the middle tab was the most difficult. I cut in 2-3/4" from each side. See, I saved you from having to do some basic math. It doesn't happen around here very often because I prefer the eyeball method.

After I cut all the tabs, I carefully wiggled my corner rounder onto the tabs and rounded them. I did this on the top corners of the divider cards too, at least when I remembered.

Then I cut out my labels and affixed them to the tabs with a little Tape Runner.

Then I took my 5x7 digi divider card and stuck it on with Tape Runner too.

Repeat. Again and again and again, until you're done.

Before I go on, I have to show you my new BFF. It's my new laminator. I've always been a laminating fool, it must be the teacher in me, but I had no idea these things were so cheap. I picked this one up at Sam's Club for around $30. Of course you could probably spend an arm and a leg on thermal laminating pouches. Theoretically.

But I love it! By the way, I blame Janae for this purchase. She's such a bad influence.

Back to the divider cards. After all the cards are made, I put them in laminating pouches and laminated all of them. And a bunch of my recipe cards too.

Until 3:00 a.m. It was sooooo much fun.

See, it's magic.

The last step is to trim the laminating plastic away. I only trimmed it from the top, about 3/8" away from the edge of the cardstock in order to keep it from peeling apart.

As I mentioned I did a bunch of recipe cards too. I didn't do them all because I ran out of laminating pouches. Oopsie. I mean theoretically I could have run out of laminating pouches had I kept going. But I didn't. I stopped. Ahem.

Ta-Da! I'm loving this method over the page protectors. Now I don't have to worry about the recipe cards sliding out of the page protectors. And they're just plain pretty now.

So, if you want to make your own recipe card dividers, I've posted all my digi dividers below. Just make sure you click on each image before saving it to your desktop and uploading to your photo processing place. That way you'll get the highest resolution possible. If you forget to do that, they'll look like crap and you'll hate them. So just be sure you do that, okay? I don't want anyone getting mad at me.

UPDATE: Since I first did this post, I've added some divider cards and divider labels. You can find those at the following links:

Breakfast

Desserts and Treats 

Label Tabs

Slow Cooking

Crock Pot

Canning

Here's a binder cover if you want to put your recipes in a little half size binder. This method is perfect if you're going to use the half-size page protectors.

And here's a binder spine. Just cut the width to fit your binder spine after you print it.

Good luck!

UPDATE: Erin, the lovely blogger who peer pressured me into doing this post, shared another alternative to laminating. She ordered some heavy duty 5x7 photo/postcard protectors here. Also, she made a cute clipboard to hold her recipe card in use. Go here to check that out.