Showing posts with label dividers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dividers. Show all posts

Monday, 21 January 2013

Quick, beautiful dividers

Very quick post…
For those of you who use a pocket size binder (filofax or Mulberry) and are looking for quick, beautiful and easy dividers, which will also benefit disadvantaged children around the world…

… can I direct you to the Unicef selection of mini-cards?
They are 8.5cm x 13cm, they come in boxes of 10 for a reasonable price, they just need minor trimming and punching and they are fabulous. And did I mention that all proceeds help disadvantaged children around the world?

See here for these ones (picture from the Unicef site; no copyright infringement intended at all – I’m trying to encourage purchases!)


And see here for these ones…


(again, picture from the Unicef site; still no copyright infringement intended at all; still trying to encourage purchases).

What do you all think?

Monday, 30 April 2012

Are you an inny or an outy?

No, I’m not talking belly-buttons, but tabs on filofaxes. The idea was sparked by a comment by Saffy on the new dividers I made for Mr Holborn (which has sadly been deleted by the author…) which said:
Wow, they look great. Interesting, when I was spending a few hours with my daughter and new label maker we both made labels for our filofaxes. I put my labels facing inwards like yours, my daughter faced her labels facing out which I immediately thought was odd. I wonder what others do? Did you plan for the labels to be facing in?

I always have my labels facing in (and so would call myself an “inny”).

I found it intriguing that others might be “outy” and then wondered if it was to do with handedness.
So, in the name of scientific research, I have a poll. Are you an inny or an outy (or indeed a vertical)? And also, which hand is dominant? If, like me, that’s a tricky one to answer – which hand do you most commonly write with?

Inny – the bottom of the letters on the tab labels are towards the inside of the filofax
Outy – the bottom of the letters on the tab labels are towards the outside of the filofax
Vertical – the tab labels are orientated vertically

Please vote in the poll?

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Miss Aston gets even prettier


[Warning - picture heavy]
[click on the picture to see a larger version]
 
A zillion years ago, I bought card to make new dividers for Miss Aston. Yes, her calligraphy ones are lovely and there was absolutely nothing wrong with them, but I fancied a change.

Anyway, almost as many years ago, I asked you to vote on which card I should use. Here are the original choices and the results of the poll…



 


 



No-one liked number 15!

The poll suggests this combination for the dividers…

Apologies for the colour cast - the original pictures are more accurate
Well, if you recall, I also had a caveat in so that if the final combination didn’t look right, I would have the rights to change it (it is my filofax after all). I didn’t like the fact that there was one silver/grey card and one yellow/purple combination, and so I swapped the yellow/purple for  another silver/grey:

Number 7 was only one vote away, and I hadn't actually voted...
Having finalised the choices for the card, I made the dividers. I made each one 9.5cm x 12.5cm which is a little larger than the standard divider size but there is plenty of space in the filofax (and I make my own sheets and frankly it’s easier to make them 8.5cm wide; I get 5 sheets from an A4 page).

As usual, I hand-trimmed the tab side (hence all the curved bits being slightly wonky) and then just wrote on them with a permanent pen. Some of the card is glittery or has foil, making the writing a little less easy, but they look okay.
Here they are together:


And here they are in situ:


 


 


 


 


 What do you think?

Monday, 16 April 2012

New dividers...

…but not for the Aston, despite all the charming, pretty card I have.

Why???

Because I am approaching planner fail and because this post on Philofaxy inspired me to be more creative with making dividers for the Holborn, ready for when I well and truly hit planner-fail and move back to the personal size.

I may post soon on why, exactly, despite loving my little pocket Aston, I am reaching planner-fail with her, but today I wanted to do a quick post to show you my new dividers for the Holborn.

Many of you have seen/commented on the calligraphy in my filofaxes before and I too love the crisp lines and beautiful blend of simplicity and complexity – they look simple on one level, but the more you look, the more you see how complicated and intricate they are. A bit like people sometimes... Most times.

My set-up is fine – that isn’t why I am reaching failure with the pocket – and so I have recreated the same set-up but on cream card, which I think looks divine with the brown leather. In fact, the crispness of the designs with the dark brown leather are a small slice of ecstasy for me when I open the binder!

I decided to try and be a bit more clever with the dividers this time. I read this post on Tommes-S blog where he had put a mirror-image of the picture he was using on his dividers on the reverse side – quite rightly pointing out that when you open the filofax at the divider, you see the reverse side and not the front! I also wanted to print the labels on the tabs, rather than hand-write them in afterwards.

I am rubbish at being able to draft things out accurately enough to be able to print onto card first and cut later but thankfully my little printer will take filofax-sized paper/card without bother, so my first step was to cut two sheets of lightweight cream card into three pieces, each 10.5cm x 17.1 cm.

Next was to do the arty bit in a word document, sized to 10.5cm x 17.1cm. For each divider, I chose one of my calligraphy pictures (gathered from various corners of the web) and chose the picture settings to be centred both vertically and horizontally. I then re-sized each picture until it was a decent size.

For the labels, I made text-boxes, fixed their size as 3.4cm (I always use 5 dividers and 17cm/5 is 3.4cm), rotated the text and then positioned them on the far right-hand edge. Getting them in exactly the right spot was tricky (and I haven’t for some) as I was having to use a ruler against my laptop screen since I have not mastered the skills of text-box placement the ‘correct’ way, using the placement settings! Nonetheless, I can cope with them. The text isn’t perfectly centred now that I have cut the tabs, but they will work!

Then came the sneaky bit of having the same design on the reverse side. I flipped the text again and then moved the text-box over to the far left-hand edge and reprinted the card. If I moved the text-box by only using the left-arrow on the laptop, then they were at exactly the same height as on the original side. I needed to nudge a couple of the images to the side as now bits of the design were over-lapping with the label (the elephant trunk etc.) but otherwise, the images are in the same places and just the labels have swapped sides and orientation.

So, here they are… (before I trimmed them up).
Fronts…

Fronts of the dividers

And reverse…

Reverse side

I then measured where the tabs should be and trimmed them up by hand. I also shaved another 1.5 mm off the width of the tab, just because the text had ended up a little far away from the edge and it looked better.

Finally, I put some squares of clear, sticky-backed plastic over the tabs to protect and strengthen them and popped them in the Holborn:
Ta da!!!


What do people think?