Fancy File Folders

Another crafty thing I've been doing lately is decorating file folders.  You know when you're going on a trip and you want to keep track of all the necessary pieces of paper that you need to take with you, such as your flight information and/or e-ticket, your itinerary, the email confirming your hotel confirmation, the map showing the route from the airport to where you're staying, that kind of stuff.  It occurred to me that it might be fun to decorate the file folder holding all this stuff in the same way that I might decorate a journal page.

The first time I tried this was earlier this year when I went to ArtBLISS in Washington, D.C.  I decorated file folders for my buddy Heather and me that turned out like this:

Here's what the inside of the folder looked like:

Then a few weeks ago, I picked up about 50 folders at Value Village (what a bargain!).

Of course, I couldn't just leave them plain.  They are just crying out to be prettied up.  Here's a folder I decorated for the Rescue Book Journals online class I'm taking (see yesterday's post).  In this case, I cut the folder in half, decorated it from pictures from Diana's blog posts about the class, stamps and tape and put it to use as a divider in a binder that holds my class notes and handouts.

Here's another divider I made (for the printouts of Diana Trout's FREE watercolour primer), using painted masking tape that I randomly stuck in various spots on the folder. I then took Sharpie posterpaint markers and added some extra doodles and swirls to the page.

You can either cover the folder with a layer of gesso or leave it plain before decorating it. You can sew paper onto the folder or attach it with glue or matte medium. You can paint it, stamp it, draw on it, punch shapes on it, whatever you fancy.  It's really easy to do and there isn't a whole lot of pressure to make it perfect. If you don't like how it turns out, just make another one.  At four cents a folder, I'm not too concerned about the cost (although so far, I haven't thrown any out either)!

What I really like about decorating file folders is that you can finish one quickly and easily. It can take as much or as little time as you like and it's so easy.  Go on, try it - you know you want to!