{five minute friday} Quick and Cute Recipe Box Dividers

Hello from Haven! I arrived in Atlanta yesterday afternoon and I’m already having a great time meeting so many wonderful ladies! I have a busy conference schedule today, but didn’t want to miss out on Five Minute Friday, so I have a quick but cute project to share with you this morning.

A couple of weekends ago I hosted a “Stock the Kitchen” themed wedding shower for my soon to be sister-in-law. My brother-in-law and his fiancé love to cook, and since the guest list included all of the women on both sides of the family, it seemed the perfect opportunity to begin the bride and groom’s recipe collection with some family favorites. I included several recipe cards along with each invitation, and asked the guests to fill them up and with them while I shower.}

I was surprised how hard it is to find recipe cards these days. I got some pretty crazy looks from store employees who seemed thing I was “so old fashioned” to want paper recipe cards when there are so many electronic means for recipe collection. But I think there is something so special about having family recipes written in the handwriting of your grandma, mother and aunts! I finally found some really cute and brightly colored recipe cards on Amazon, and I also purchased a sleek and stylish acrylic recipe box as my gift to the bride-to-be.

The recipe box and cards I found were both adorable, but the dividers that came with the box left something to be desired! 

Since the yellow dividers just weren't doing it for me, it probably comes as no surprise that I decided to make my own. But I already had a long list of things to do in preparation for the wedding shower, so I needed the recipe dividers to be a super quick project. For anyone else out there who is "old fashioned" like me and still likes handwritten recipes, here's a really fast way to make your own adorable recipe box dividers!

I came across an incredibly cute pad of heavyweight DCVW scrapbook paper at Michael's {on sale, to boot}. The paper was 6 inches wide - the exact width of the recipe cards, making the paper the perfect solution for the dividers. 

Best of all, each piece of paper had a band of a complimentary color and a scalloped edge, making the paper perfect for creating dividers. 

I measured the height of the yellow dividers that came with the recipe box {4.5 inches} and then measured and marked 4.5 inches on the back of each piece of paper {as you can see, the back of each paper is a different color}.

I then cut the recipe dividers down to size.

Next I needed to create tabs across the top of the cards so that the labels would be visible when stacked in the box. There are a total of 16 scallops along the pieces of paper, and since I was making a total of eight recipe dividers this meant that each tab would be two scallops wide. I measured, then cut the tabs.

Finally I used my label maker to label each recipe divider tab, although I could have just easily writen the categories on using a pen.

Five minutes later, I had a much cuter recipe box to give to my soon to be sister-in-law.

 

During the shower I simple added a small sign to the lid, reminding family members to place their recipes into the cute acrylic box.

Much more about the kitchen themed wedding shower will be coming to the blog very soon! UPDATE: Follow these links to read all about the Stock the Kitchen Wedding Shower and three quick and easy Kitchen Themed Games that are perfect for any wedding shower!

Are you looking for more entertaining ideas? You might be interested in these posts!