Memory Verse Holder « The Hybrid Chick

Memory Verse Holder

By Jessica Pranaitis Tuesday September 22, 2009

As I was browsing the aisles of an office supply store which was having a going-out-of business sale, I happened to come across one of those old-fashioned rolodexes that, until the advent of the PDA, used to sit on everyone’s desks holding their addresses. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with it at the time, but it seemed like it would make a great hybrid project at some point, so I added it to my cart. This year I decided it would work perfectly as a holder for my boys’ memory verses since it would allow me to easily flip between the verses assigned to each boy, as well as add in the new ones without hassle. Thankfully, the project was simple to put together, since time seems to be at a premium these days around our house!

The first thing I did was to measure the size of the dividers and create a new Photoshop document that was just slightly bigger all the way around. You could also scan in one of the dividers to use as a template, but we just recently replaced our printer and I hadn’t yet experimented with the scan function so I went with the easy way. I then decided how many dividers I would need to start, and settled on three for each boy… one for verses that we are currently working on, one for verses that have already been memorized, and one for verses that we are not yet working on. Add in one cover paper and that gave me a total of seven dividers to create. (Another advantage to using the rolodex system is that when our third son is old enough for the club, I can just create three more dividers for him and keep using the same system.) Now came the fun part, designing each divider. I decided to use the Flight of Fancy mini kit by Elise’s Pieces Designs because my boys all love airplanes and there are so many fun patterned papers in it.

After I finished scrapping my seven pieces, I created two new 8 1/2 x 11 inch documents and arranged the flattened files so that I could print them off. I chose fairly stiff cardstock to print on since these will be handled quite a bit. There was some empty space on the second document which I filled up with other digital papers and elements to use at a later time. I try to get as much printing out of the paper as I can.

Once my papers were printed, I cut out the pieces and gathered up a few basic supplies that I thought I might need…

I didn’t end up using the glue stick because the dividers were sturdy enough without a second layer of cardstock behind them. I used one of the dividers as a pattern to trace on each of my printouts, being careful to reverse the direction each time so that the tabs would be alternating. Here is where scanning in the divider and using it as a template would have saved a little time… I could have skipped the tracing and just started cutting out each one.

After I finished the tracing, all that was left was to grab my pair of little scissors and cut each one out. Cutting around the bottom where they fit onto the two tracks was a little tricky since I didn’t want to bend the paper too much, but I got them all done and now the only challenge left is to keep on top of writing out the verse cards and helping them memorize them each week!

This project would also be a great way to keep an organized list of things like birthdays and anniversaries, since you can just add new ones in date order easily, or maybe as a way to keep track of new recipes that you want to try along with the name of the cookbook and page number where it can be found. I love it when a bargain find turns out to be actually useful!