Cheat Easy D.I.Y Filo Dividers

I was feeling lazy a few weeks back and decided to make some homemade dividers, but I had very few resources and not a lot of energy so I decided to cheat.

Here’s my brief tutorial on how to too!

What you need:

Scissors

Pritt Stick

Blank filofax dividers

Printed out designs from the computer/postcards/pictures

Standard hole punch

Tools

 Step 1

Decide if you want a theme for your dividers and then go forth and search for pretty pictures to inspire you throughout the year.

I printed some pictures off from the internet.

For the A5 size I printed two pictures each the size of half a landscape piece of A4 paper.

For a personal size divider I printed the pictures to a slightly larger size than those found on personal insert templates.

Step 2

Once you have your pictures printed out:

For an A5 divider go ahead and cut them out

For a personal divider take your current divider and place it on the printed paper and draw around it.

Draw an outline of your personal divider and cut out

Don’t forget to draw in the punch holes too. Once your done go ahead and chop chop chop!

Step 3

Re-arrange the picture on to your blank filofax divider and go ahead and stick on some pritt stick really making sure you get the edges and stick on to the divider.

Arrange & stick!

Please note: for the A5 dividers the half an A4 size picture printout will be small and fit in the middle of the filofax divider without you needing to punch holes. Adjust the picture size before printing if you’d like the print out to cover the whole divider.

Step 4 – for Personal size

It’s optional whether you want to punch the holes before or after you stick the picture on the filofax divider. I find with a little patience and your eye close to your hole punch you can just punch the holes one by one over the pencil markings you drew earlier.

Punch holes

Ensure that your hole punch is the correct size and not too small for your filofax rings. Also be careful not to re-punch early parts of the paper as you move the hole punch down the page (as I did one too many times!)

Et voila! Cheat easy, sort of professional looking dividers. If your extra creative go ahead and laminate and decorate etc. I don’t have the tools so these lovelies will do me good for now!

A5 dividers

Personal sizied dividers

Tips

I use pritt stick instead of heavier glue as I’ve found I can usually peel it off with little tears and rips to the original divider later on when I change my mind and want a new picture. This happens very often.

Hope this helps!

Hello Cherry!

As I have been mentioning around the blog, I own a delightful cherry metropol filofax in a personal size. I bought it in 2009 when it was even cheaper than its already reasonable price and I thought eh.. why not?

Looking back at older pages I used it as a full time diary for a few years, recording everything from appointments, meetings, deadlines, work schedules and social gatherings (parties!). Then unexpectedly and for a reason I don’t know, everything just stopped. The metropol was being left at home with appointments being recoded every so often if I could remember.

Then at the end of 2012 I discovered it under a pile of papers an instantly fell in love all over again, I started researching and came across some of the awesome sites listed as my favourites on the left hand side here and realised I was nowhere near utilising my metropol’s capability.

So after many late nights printing and sticking and a few shopping sprees I introduced my metropol to lists, goals, schedules and lots more!

Current Setup

My current set up opens up with the dashboard and and a slide pocket with card slots. In the pocket I’ve kept my current specsavers prescription as I ALWAYS loose it and have to fork out for eye tests all the time, a London underground map and a scruffy nail file just in case.

My dashboard currently has a quote and a lil picture that always makes me laugh. I’ve clipped these on with the view to change them every so so to keep me inspired and happy.

•  Tab 1 – Diary
• WPP, which works well as I’m relatively quiet now, but may change up to Wo2P if I get busy.

WPP

• Tab 2 – Month on one page.
• Bought from WHSMiths, I currently record how many times I work out and any reoccurring events with coloured dot stickers. Not sure what else I could do that doesn’t feel like I’m repeating events from my WPP.. Hmmm any ideas?

Tab 2 - Month on one page with notes.

Tab 3 - Notes and Lists

• Tab 3 – Notes
• To do lists printed courtesy of Philofaxy
• General notes about finance, work hours etc
  
  
• Tab 4 – Career
• Notes on applications, interviews and lists of skills, things to read to keep updated.

• Tab 5 – Projects
• Haven’t used this much, currently just records blog ideas

• Tab 6 – Goals
• I’ve created a further 3 tabs for fitness, finance and loves to record my goals for this year

Fitness tab - DIY

• Tab 7 – Loves
• This is just my favourite tab. I can recorded anything I like from quotes, little diary entries on special occasions or sticking memorable tickets from nights out.

Then the usual address and world map with a lil' clear pocket sleeve at the back for stickys.

That’s my current set up that has been working well, but I’ve recently purchased a new addition: an A5 Ebony luxe! AH THE EXCITEMENT!

So I will be re-visiting and re-jigging my set up as I don’t want to carry around as much. Most of my personal writing is done at home so I could do with a slim down.

How have you set up yours? Is it working well into the year so far?