DIY Acrylic Binder Inserts ... Recycle!

A few days ago someone on Facebook asked where to get these:

I will admit that these strips are not that expensive but if you need them in a hurry and you have the supplies on hand .....  My first response was "make them yourself" and I explained how I would do it...today I decided to do a little tutorial.

1- find heavy plastic that is at least 9.5" long.  I have used transparencies in the past 

but today I wanted to recycle something...  I used this SPELLBINDERS packaging.

2- Cut the edges off so that you have only the two flat pieces

3- Stick Scor-Pal double stick tape on the very edge of one of the plastic sheets then cut it .75" away from the tape so you now have a strip of acrylic about 1.25" wide (if you use .5" wide Scor-pal tape.

...continue until you have all you need or you run out of packaging... I was able to get a total of six from this packaging...plus a couple more strips I can add .25" to.

4- Using a sheet of 3 hole punched paper mark your hole placement with a sharpie.

5- Punch the three holes... I used a heavy duty punch drill to punch through three pieces at a time, that way I only had to mark one.  You can probably tell from this close up that the three strips are different sizes...sorry!  I didn't measure, I just cut.

6- I removed the protective paper and stuck the piece of acrylic to the back side of a ruler...of course it can be stuck to the back of most anything you want to add to your 3 ring binder.

And here it is in my binder, ready when I need it!

Just FYI this is my SCRAPRACK Create and Carry Binder 

that I am loading with all my jewelry making tools, beads and findings.... So now I have a quick, ready to travel jewelry making kit!  So, I will definitely need a ruler!