How to Organize Greeting Cards with a Handmade Memento Binder

Does anyone else have tons of greeting cards saved in a box somewhere? I decided to make a memento binder that can be placed on a shelf, like a photo album. Then it’s easy to access when you want to take a stroll down memory lane! It’s also a great way to organize greeting cards by occasion or year. I also recycled an old cutting mat for this project which worked great for this project!

P. S. There’s a link and pic for a delicious lava cake I made one year at the bottom of the post if you’re interested. Need to do this again!

Bin of Mementos

Years ago I went through about 2 large boxes of greeting cards. I threw away a very large trash bag of cards that were just not that meaningful to me. If it had a personal message or I really liked the card, I kept it. This all got divided up into file folders by groups – like who they were given to. More recently, I started a bin of cards and other fun things I’ve received from my online crafty friends.

It’s completely full and I’ve added mementos from my real life adventures, so I really need to get things straightened out. I’m starting with organizing the cards I’ve received over the years from all my crafty friends.

Making Binder Covers

I have a couple of old cutting mats I’ve been saving just for this kind of project! This one was pretty well used as you can see.

Cutting up the mat was easy with some heavy duty scissors. The smaller pair worked better than the larger pair strangely enough. The small hole punch I have worked really well, which was also surprising. Small but mighty was a winner for this project!

I cut each piece where two sides were finished edges and then I had to figure out a way to finish the cut edges. After trying lots of different things, I just used plain masking tape. I’m covering most of it, so we’ll see how it holds up!

I decided to paint this with the same purple paint I used on the framed puzzle project. I wanted to be able to see the numbers still so I didn’t cover them all the way up.

The cover needed a little more so I added some layered scrapbook papers and chipboard cutouts.

Then I coated the chipboard with some distress ink and dotted it with pearl alcohol ink. I dug through my stash and found some craft-board frames to add too.

Note ~> You can use any rotary cutter to cut paper, but only use it to cut paper!  Just like scissors, it will wear differently depending on what you cut with it.  I have scissors and rotary cutters that are only for paper and I have them only for fabric.

Preparing the Cards

I painted the inside of the covers too and decided to add some crafty stickers I’ve collected over the years. You’ll see these in the finished photos!

I started stacking up my cards and reading through them again. Such great memories! I decided to put any handmade cards and letters in a different scrapbook I’m working on.

Once I hade them all sorted, I marked and punched the tallest card I had. Then I used it to mark holes for all the other cards. I did align the bottom of all the cards even though they are not even with the bottom of the cover.

There were lots of cards!

The Finished Binder

I used 1.5 inch book rings to hold everything together, but I will need bigger ones because it’s too stuffed to close!

I do like how the covers turned out, but I’d like to add something to cover the taped edges better.

Once I get some larger book rings I’ll be able to put this on the shelf. Then I can pull it out when I really need a pick me up!

I plan on making more of these and trying out different ways to finish off that cut edge. Hope this gives you some ideas to organize greeting cards you may have tucked away!

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