19 January 2012

Dividers with a difference

We have seen some very creative and beautiful section dividers from different blogs and websites in the past. I have to be honest I'm not that sort of creative person really, crafty but not in a craft sense!

So I've been looking around for some alternative things to make dividers out of, that would be different to the plain cream ones, that would make use of items that are no longer used.

One idea I saw on someone else's site was to use old road atlas pages cut to size then laminated to give them a bit more 'stiffness' I might try this with my French road atlas when I replace it soon.  I would most probably pick the pages from our surrounding area which will mean the divider serves two purposes, and I like things like that.

So that was one idea. But at Christmas sitting around with the family I started to think there has to be other ideas that we can try... and there it was stirring at me....



A big stack of chocolate, 7 bars in fact, all neatly packed in their own individual boxes. So what do you do after you have eaten all that chocolate? Well you recycle the boxes.... but I had other ideas... Pull the box apart... trim it to size and punch it and you get this:


A perfect, functioning divider. and the folding bit on the right acts as a tab that can fold out of the way, it can be labelled, trimmed to a tab shape or left as it is.  Oh and the chocolate was very nice apart from the milk chocolate with lime... I swapped it for some plain instead!

This week I also received in the post a lovely Vogue desk calendar from our friends at City Organiser. Each week is a different picture taken from the magazine. The picture and the calendar part are perforated, so as each week passes you tear off the picture and the calendar bit to reveal a new week.


Here are the first two weeks pictures, which you can send as postcards.


But instead of using them as postcards. I've punched them and they make great personal size dividers.


These are just some of my simple ideas, but once you start looking around your own home it is surprising what there is that you can reuse like this.

19 comments:

  1. Love that Vogue calendar! This is very well timed, I am thinking I need to make some dividers up soon. I am pretty creative but not at all crafty. Will need to think of something good. Laminating something already in the filofax might be a good idea!

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  2. I suppose what would be a nice idea is to decorate the plain dividers with stencils or other things, then laminate and trim around the tabs. This would preserve the decoration!

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  3. I have looked up vintage adverts and vintage seed packet sites and used these for dividers,printed onto cream card with Avery tabs added at the side and as top dividers. There are some lovely French Vintage advertising posters which can be downloaded too, and American travel postcards/posters. All bright and colourful. Save the image into Word and then scale it to your Filofax size in page layout. Add banner shapes if you want a title.

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  4. @Butanben Great ideas. Where do you buy your Avery tabs?

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  5. I love this idea and, as an avid consumer of chocolate, I can probably amass enough wrappers to do this by the weekend!

    Does your filofax smell of chocolate? I think that would be wonderful!

    I currently use a Hampshire as my work filo and a smaller 'microfile' for all things personal. But I am hankering after a burgundy Malden and just need to find the justification for buying it, other than 'I really really want it!'

    Love this site :)

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  6. Hi
    I forgot to mention the chocolate was in sealed foil wrappings so no messy choccie bits in my Filofax!
    Steve

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  7. Great ideas, Steve, many thanks!
    Especially the chocolate packages do inspire me... ;-)
    So one Filofax can be the "Lindt" (my noble Ivory Deco), the other "Ritter Sport" (Crimson Malden?), the next "Milka" (Purple Finchley?)an there will be found another type for the Siena... mmmhhh I guess I´ve got a lot to do (eat ;-) ) the next days...

    Pieces of wallpaper could also be a good idea... I saw it somewhere on a blog.

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  8. OHMYGOSH! I love the Vogue calendars! I had to settle for some scrapbooking paper and washi tape--no access here in hell to any groovy postcards.

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  9. @fluffy ferret. I buy my Avery tabs at Staples. They come in a dual pack of pink and cream. They also do semi- circular Avery tabs. I like the cream ones. I label them with my Dymo label maker.... also from Staples. Actually the label maker is so handy for around the house too eg for dating and labelling freezer boxes, baking jars etc. They do various cartridges, one of which prints iron on labels for children's school uniform etc. Handy for mums.The cartridges are dearish, £6-8?, but last ages. Dymo stuff also available in WH Smiths.xx

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  10. PS forgot to say the Avery tabs hold up extremely well and I've never known them to fall off!!

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  11. PPS- I love the picture of your ginger cat. Reminds me of my childhood cat... Ginger. Such a loveable scamp, bless him! Thank you for the positive comments..... glad you liked my divider thoughts.I print an index on the back of my dividers so I know what is in each section too.

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  12. I just used scrapbook paper that either correlated to the section or I just plain old liked!

    I simply trimmed the paper to the size of an existing divider, glued both sides and stuck together! I've had them for ages now, and have never had a problem with them peeling off. Plus, since most of us have random divider sets lying around, they can be changed up whenever you like :)

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  13. @Butanben Thank you! We have a Staples in Aberdeen so I'll have a look. Any excuse to add to my stationery hoard :o) Our puss Leo is also a loveable scamp. He was on top of the snow covered shed roof in the picture and had snow on his chin like a beard!

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  14. I love this idea! For the past few weeks I've been wanting to be all crafty and make my own dividers :) this is so inspirering - thank you!

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  15. The chocolate wrappers are such a great idea! When I find chocolate wrapper pretty enough here in Germany, I will think of that.

    At the moment I've made the dividers for my pocket filo of postcards I bought at the art museum's shop. But when I made dividers for my mom's filofax (personal) I also used a calendar, because I couldn't find postcards large enough. I think calendar is the better solution because of the thinner paper.

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  16. @ Alison - sort of: http://mylifeallinoneplace.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-unique-new-today-marker.html

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  17. Those intercalaires à la française look divine, Steve!

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  18. I asked some friends who were going on holiday if they would bring me back a few postcards of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Central Scotland, which they did and which I use as dividers in my VDS.

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