Die Storage Folder (from A4 folder)

Hello
It's a sunny day here, but the temperature and seeing the leaves on the turn definitely tells me that Autumn is here.  I think I could cope better with the Winder months if there were more hours of daylight - it's very thought of the long, long hours of darkness that make my shoulders sag.

Anyway, this weekend we popped into Staples on the way back from a lovely pub lunch and bought a couple of cheap A4 ring binders.  I wanted to see how easy cutting them down to make die storage folders would be.  Till now I've been making them from scratch using thick card and my Bind-It-All, which is a bit of a faff and takes quite a while to get right.
I already have lots of A5 zipped wallets, and some magnetic sheets, which I cut down to go in and out of the wallets easily.  Both bought from that well known "store" named after a big river!  I wanted my new folder to be the right size for them - buying the common A4 size ring binders is cheaper than trying to find the perfect size you need.  

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I measured and drew lines to mark the new size, then used a ruler and knife - the sort with the snap-off blades to cut along the lines. I found that going over the line several times was better than trying to get through the whole thickness in one go

Here's the new sized binder with the original to show the difference

next I covered it with pretty paper, you need 2 sheets for the outside, and 2 more of the same design for the insides.  I used some Bazzill card as I didn't have 2 pieces from the paper set I'd used

Next I punched the holes in the plastic wallets

Last job is to add the dies to the magnetic side of the sheets; I use the facing page to add information as to the manufacturer, plus an assembled die cut to remind me how it should look - it also makes it easy to find the one I want when I thumb through the file.  If its a set of dies, I also note down how many pieces there are in the set - helps me not to lose them!

I'm still not sure how I will eventually organise the files, by manufacturer or theme, so for now I've not put labels on the folders I've made.  They have different papers on them and I can usually remember which dies are in which one.  

The only ones I've decided about are the Word, Phrase. Letter ones, which I'm keeping altogether in a smaller folder at the moment 

Today I've been adding my Joanna Sheen dies to the folder

Just in case you are interested, here are a couple of photos of one of the binders I made from scratch, using thick card and doing the binding with a Bind-It-All

it's really easy having dies stored in binders, they don't take up much space on a shelf.  I still have a long way to go before all mine are in binders though; the plastic box you can just about see on the shelf above is a long box and it's stuffed with dies waiting to be "bindered" - though I think that for now I may leave the Spellbinders Nesties in their current, CD case storage (spotty box).

Well, that's it for now, I really hope this idea is one that you might find useful Thank you for looking