Card Keeper

If you make cards for people or if you like to buy cards when you find them, this is a great project for yourself or to make as a gift.  It’s probably not really difficult, now that I figured out what doesn’t work!  🙂  For this I used:

• 6 sheets of white cardstock paper (8 by 10)
• 6 sheets of black cardstock paper (8 by 10)
• 9 inch 3 ring notebook
• 3 –2 inch book rings
• scrapbooking glue
• tissue wrapping paper
• Mod Podge
• hole punch

Bear in mind, you can make the colors however you want, I wanted to have white paper on the outside and black on the inside, so that’s how I’m going to explain this.  Obviously, do it however makes you happy.

Fold a piece of the white cardstock along the long side about 1/4 of the way up.  Then fold the cardstock in half.  Repeat with the other 5 pieces of white paper.  You can see what they should look like in the picture.  Be sure to carefully match the edges of the paper as you fold so that everything is straight, otherwise you will end up with a bit of a mess.  Don’t ask how I know this.

After you have finished with this, set these aside.  The next part is easier.  But don’t get too smug.  This is the easiest part of the project.  🙂

Next fold the black cardstock in half the same direction that you folded the white, (except don’t make the small 1/4  fold at the bottom –see photo).

Again, be careful to make sure everything is nicely lined up so that your folds are straight.  It will make a big difference in your finished product.

Repeat for all of the black cardstock.

Once you have all of these done, insert the black cardstock pieces into the white ones, by sliding the bottom of the black piece into the “sleeve” made in the bottom of the white piece.  It can be a little tricky, but it will work.  You might feel like you need to trim the black paper just a little bit, but don’t trim it too much (if at all).  By the way, if you mess one up, you can always make another –don’t ask me how I know… 🙂

There is your little spot to slip cards into!  Of course you’re not nearly done, but you can see what the card keeper part is about.  Do the other 5 pages and be glad that each page has 2 sides and there are only 12 months in the year!  Imagine if we lived on a planet with 30 or 40 months!

At this point you will want to print out some sort of month heading and day spot for each page.  You have some options.  I just made something up on my computer.  If you have a nice calendar program, you may have something you can just print out (I didn’t) or you might find something premade (I didn’t).  If you are good with hand lettering (I’m not) you can probably just draw something too.  Mine took me a whole afternoon and I’m not overly thrilled with it, but it is what it is.  At any rate, you want something on each page to write birthdates into, so you will know what cards to put into that sleeve.

The next thing I had to think about was how to bind it.  I did some internet searching and there were options, but I wanted it to be easy to open up wide, so I thought a notebook would be good.  I bought a 9 inch 3 ring binder (the smaller sort of notebook).  You can see it in the photo.  I measured the rings and used a piece of paper and with a hole punch punched holes in the pages I had made, and put them into the notebook, but I wasn’t very pleased with the result.  It really wasn’t big enough, and the pages sort of hampered each other.  It didn’t work.  Hmmm.  Now I was stuck.

But, my wonderful husband to the rescue.  After a day of contemplating, he said, “What about those big loose rings?”  I admit they had never crossed my mind.  But he was right and he’s a genius!  So, off to the office store we went. I was disappointed that they didn’t have the big ones in colors (why don’t they ever have exactly what I need in exactly the way I need it?) so I got regular chrome ones.  At this point, don’t ask for miracles!  They did have awesome RED ones in a smaller size and I bought those too for a later project.

I coud salvage the front and back covers of the notebook, which my husband carefully removed for me (for some reason he really doesn’t like me to have really sharp objects around my fingers) and put the holes into them with my hole punch (which I think is probably “done for” now).  I might think of a project for the ring/binder thingie, I’m not sure, it looks like *something*.

Now it was time to do something FUN!  MOD PODGE!  I think you will recognize this tissue paper.  Yeah, it’s a favorite of mine, and I think that sadly, this is the last of it.  But, I thought it was manly enough to put on something for my Dad.  I covered the outside front and back cover with the stripes, and the insides with a reddish that looked nice with it.  I thought about putting something on the front cover, but really, I liked the way it looked so much in the end, I decided against putting anything else.  Just 3 coats of Mod Podge on each side.

Once it was really dry, I could put it all together.  Just be sure all of the months are where they need to be.  🙂  This is the sort of project that lends itself to creativity, once you have figured out the basics.    I think the major caution is to be really sure your Mod Podge is really dry before you put it together so that you don’t have things sticking together and ruining all of your work.  Don’t ask how I know.  🙂

Hope my Dad likes it as much as I love the cards he makes me!  🙂