Custom Binder Divider Tabs

I'd been lamenting over binder tabs that would look good and had meaningful labels as apposed to index numbers or letters. So, I just spent the morning creating a test run of custom binder tabs for my albums. I like how they are turning out.

I created a file in MS Excel (as seen below). I used the same card stock that the album pages are printed on and same font as the used on the pages. As a matter of fact I used the back side of misprints from my albums. "waste-not, want-not"!

After printing the tabs I cut them into strips using the guide lines and carefully applied clear packing tape (this took a few practice tries!).

I then cut them apart, bent them and cut the corner angles off each.

I applied them to the page with glue stick as a test but double sided tape or I suppose book binding glue would work as well. I applied the glue all the way up to the crease for a good seal.

The packing tape is the tricky part, getting it on and without bubbles or a wrinkle takes a couple dry runs. I printed an extra sheet on regular paper to try it first.

This way I can also add years, events or other notable divisions in my binders while giving it a "finished look", in my opinion anyways.

I use MS WORD mail merge with EXCEL to print up to 3 lines of text on Avery Labels. With a good color printer, you can create professional looking labels for boxes, binders, Vario pages, dealer cards and page dividers. The labels can be applied to Avery tabs for page dividers, but I also attached them to index cards as dividers in my storage boxes.

It does take some practice using mail merge and getting the text to fit properly. The labels and index tabs can be a little pricey - not to mention a high quality color printer. It also takes a little experimenting to get sizing right.

Thanks for the post. I have been considering divider labels but resorted to quick and not so elegant until I could think of something better.

Most dividers are cascaded (splayed to show 5 or 8 tabs) but this only works if you are not moving pages around. I keep multiple countries in a binder and sometimes move them from one binder to the next so the position changes. I also could add a country in between two existing countries. This is my challenge.

I use black leather piano hinged binders and was using the black leather tabbed alpha-indexed tabs with a index key in the front of the binders and previously had experimented with colored divider pages and I also tried the self adhesive tabs with the insert that could be changed but none really filled the bill.

angore: I know what you mean about moving things around. I have particular binders that are stable enough where I will used these and a couple others that I will stick with indexed dividers.

GoshKruse: When I started experimenting with making my own, I also started out with MS Word but found working directly in Excel a bit easier in some respects. The only challenge is the lack of some text & paragraph formatting tools. I over came this on an as needed basis with insertion of a text box which does offer those controls.

One other item of note: These tabs are on a "divider page" with a "section" title and introductory text on them. I don't put them on actual stamp holding album pages. Such as the example (cropped screen shot) below that I am working on in MS Publisher right now...



Excuse typos or malformed sentences in the example I'm in the middle of edits...