Fabric Covered Ring Binders

My ring binders after a bit of transformation with pretty fabric and some glue… They turned out really darn pretty, don’t you think?

Wanna do the same with your ugly ring binders or folders? Okay, this is a descriptive tutorial post for you then!

Find a nice sturdy cotton fabric, take out those ugly ring binders from your bookshelf and “dress them up” with a new look. I’ve been thinking about doing this for years!

I used ordinary white glue, covered the ring binder’s spine in glue and adhered the fabric when the glue was sticky. I cut a piece of fabric that covered the colored cloth spine, tuck the edges to the inside of the covers and smoothed all wrinkles and air bubbles out. Then, after a few hours of work, my binders are transformed and in my opinion, much prettier!

Do you have this kind of ugly ring binders in your bookshelf too? They all have black covers and different coloured spines; bold red, dark blue, brown and black are most common. They are from a time when papers filled every home and every office. When nothing was digital and everything had to be saved and filed away. We’ve always had them at home too. Mom and dad stored away all kind of papers in them. My baby photos are in a few blue folders. I’ve got ring binders filled with papers from school, previous work situations, contracts and diplomas, published articles, inspiration etc. etc.

After all that hard work, I deserve a drink.

Here you go, have one on me.

These days there are a lot of pretty alternatives out there in paper stores, if you have money to buy them. But as you might know by now I don’t like buying New of items I already own! Especially not when the stuff I already own are working perfectly fine (though not as modern or pretty as I would wish…).

To contributing to the consumption of goods that are so unnecessary (nice looking binders when you already own that kind of binders are very unnecessary indeed). A lot of today’s consumption is about getting “new and pretty” of items we either already have or don’t really need. Shops try to sell us pretty dish cloths, bed linen, towels, office supplies and clothes that we already have a version of at home. And boy, most of the time they succeed. We are seduced by the prettiness much too often!

You can borrow my mantra if you want to. It’s:

DIY (do it yourself), recycling and remodeling old stuff is better for our kids future, the environment – and my economy! Plus it’s much more fun, personal, greener, and more creative to fix old things up a bit instead of always buying new!

I try to do this whenever I can.

What about labeling your folders?

I cut off the plastic label holder from each spine before adhering new fabric. I saved those and recycled them on the “new” spine. When the new fabric was in place I used a staple gun on to secure it in place as you can see on the images. I had to hand bend the tacks on the inside, but after that they are secured in place and I can slide in a label with information about what I store in that particular binder!

If you want to see more posts in this series, they are called: before and after. Check them out!