So remember last week when I said I was working on a new lesson plan book for myself?  I sat down last week to make the tabbed dividers for my new binder and here’s how I made them:

First I used my label punch (I sell Stampin’ Up! products and this is a retired punch–but I can probably get you one if you’d like it!) I punched out 5 colors, two tabs in each color (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue) because we are in school for 10 months.  I printed a label on my DYMO LetraTag with clear label tape for each month.

These are the papers I used.  They are retired Stampin’ Up papers, but are some of my favorites because of the colors, so I decided to dip into my hoard of them and use them. 🙂

Then I used adhesive and stuck the tabs onto the papers at different intervals so they were spaced out and not overlapping with the month before or the month after. Then, I laminated them in my PurpleCows laminator.  The size of the papers was 8 x 9.  I couldn’t get an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sized paper plus the tab through the laminator, so I cut them down a bit to fit. 🙂 

Here they are all laminated!  I used 5 mil laminating film, so they are thick and won’t come apart easily when I flip from month to month.  I left about a 1/2 inch of laminating film on the back end of the dividers so that I could punch the holes in them.

I did decide to go with a 3 ring binder instead of binding it myself because after looking at last year’s lesson plans, there are so many documents I have to insert through the year, that I need it to be flexible! 🙂  I got a binder that’s 1 1/2 inches thick, so I won’t have the page turning problems like I did in the 1 inch binder. 🙂

Kristen 🙂