FREE Printable Planner Tab Dividers or Page Markers to Get Organized in Style!

Looking for CUTE FREE printable planner tab dividers or page markers for your planner?  Tired of that plain old clear page divider that came with your planner?  Yeah, me too!  That’s why I started making some cute and colorful DIY planner dividers for my planner!

They are super easy to make at home with our step by step tutorial and FREE printable planner tab dividers to experiment with!  We include free PDF files for simple download, print and cut.  We also have included PNG files that can be uploaded to Cricuit Design Space to create an SVG print and cut file.  We’ve also made a few motivational phrases for you to choose from.

Our DIY process is similar to our earlier tutorial on How to Make Your Own DIY Planner Covers.  If you’re interested in making your own planner covers you won’t want to miss this article that include FREE printable planner covers to experiment with!

|Meet Our FREE Printable Planner Tab Divider|

So let’s take a look at the cute unicorn planner tab divider template I made for you!  I really love the colors, design and how this whole project turned out.  I’ve done all the hard work to make sure you can produce a quality free printable planner tab dividers that will LAST.  As always I love to hear what you think.  Leave me a note below in the comments section at the bottom of this page.  It really helps me tailor content when I know what you guys like!

Our page marker is designed to *peek* out much like a tab top so that you can see and easily jump to your place in your planner.  It’s functional AND cute!  Here is a little preview of how it will look with your planner closed.

Here is how our FREE printable planner tab divider looks like inside the planner!  I love this sleepy little hipster unicorn with a rainbow of colors!  We have three different coffee mug phrases to choose from on our download.  One of them is “but first cuppa” (for us tea drinkers).  We also have one mug that says “but first coffee” and another that says “hello beautiful”.

Okay, now I’m going to show you my method for making DIY page markers for your planner that will withstand the test of time.  Let’s start with the supply list.  I’ve hyperlinked to everything I’m using to make for easy shopping.

Note: All these items can be found on Amazon and have free shipping with Amazon Prime.  If you’re not a Prime member you can sign up for a FREE 30 day trial HERE and take advantage of FREE shipping for 30 days!

80 lb White Glossy Cardstock Paper

Corner Rounder (optional)

Laminating Machine

5 Mil Laminating Pouches

Planner Hole Punch

Fiskars Fingertip Craft Knife

 

|Step 1: Download our FREE Printable Planner Tab Divider OR Make Your Own|

We’re providing you with a free printable planner divider template to experiment with (at the end of our tutorial) but in the future you may might want to try and make your own divider designs when you see how easy it is.  There are a ton of beautiful graphics, clipart, fonts & stock photos on our favorite graphic design site Creative Market.

I can LITERALLY spend hours and hours perusing all the beautiful graphics from thousands of uber talented graphic designers.  If you have a moment check out some beautiful examples HERE.

You can take any of the beautiful graphics you might find on Creative Market and upload them to a user friendly, web based graphic design program like picmonkey.com and arrange them with a tab for hole punching (like in our upcoming example).  Picmonkey  will also allow you to do text overlays and tons of special effects to any of your projects.

Here are some tab dividers I’ve made recently (in addition to the unicorn tab divider)…for inspiration!  The conversation heart coffee cup planner divider is a part of our Valentines Day Mega Sticker Pack.

|Step 2: Print Your Planner Tab Divider on Glossy Cardstock|

In order to have a thick and substantial planner insert you WILL need to print on card stock.  You’ll want to print on glossy white card stock that is at least 80 lbs weight like THIS inexpensive option.

If you are a frequent reader on my website you will probably hear me preaching the benefits of using glossy paper for all of my printables.  This is for good reason!  Glossy paper prints true to color so vibrant, bold colors print out closer to how they look on your computer.  Matte paper absorb more ink and the colors can look faded or washed out.

In the picture below I’ve printed on glossy card stock and the colors are bright and bold.

You’ll need to adjust the paper settings on your printer before printing on glossy card stock.  After pressing the print button go to the settings area.  Look at the paper options and choose something along the lines of “card stock” or “other photo paper”.

You’ll want to pick a thicker paper setting so that your printer accounts for this thick glossy paper.  Your printer will also be sent a message that it’s printing something high quality and needs to slow down.

If your printer is like mine there is a separate rear tray for special papers.  Make sure you put the paper in the correct tray and that that the paper is properly aligned.  When using glossy cardstock allow 5 minutes for your print out to properly dry.

CRICUT USERS:  You will need to grab the free transparent PNG cut file out of our printables library and upload it to your Cricut Design Space library.  You DO NOT need to convert this PNG file to an SVG file.  Design Space accepts transparent PNGs  like ours (I’ve tested it).  After the file is uploaded to your Design Space library you will insert the file to a new project as a “print and cut” and re-size as needed.  Click the “make it” button and select “80 lb card stock” from the materials drop down menu.  You can skip to step 4 for the rest of the tutorial.

 |Step 3: Trim Away Excess Card Stock|

If you are planning on trimming our planner page dividers by hand we have a few pro-tips for you.  Obviously you can use plain old scissors to cut away the excess card stock.  BUT if you’re OCD like me and want nice, straight lines I highly recommend that you use a straight line paper cutter for simple, straight cuts.   For non-linear cuts I use a Fiskars Fingertip Craft Knife.  Both of these tools are pretty inexpensive and they really make the difference when you need to cut nice lines.  

I’m a little too OCD to cut anything out by hand.  Whenever possible I use my Cricut to cut out any planner dividers I make.  We’ve provided PNG files that can be uploaded to Cricut Design space and will convert to an SVG within the Cricut software.

Just look at those perfect straight lines!  Love it!

|Step 4: Laminate Your Planner Divider|

Next you’ll want to place each planner divider inside a 8.5 x 11 5mil laminating pouch. Most desktop, at home laminators will melt 3 or 5 mil laminating pouches.  I prefer the thicker 5 mil pouches because it makes all my planner inserts, covers or dividers last a lot longer under heavy wear (they are thicker and more substantial).

After you’ve placed the divider in it’s own laminating pouch you’ll run it through your laminator per the manufactures directions.  This will only take a minute once your machine has warmed up.

I really LOVE my super basic laminating machine.  It’s nothing fancy and it’s not very expensive (at the time of this writing it’s under $24!).  I use it a lot…especially when it comes to my Happy Planner.  I laminate almost everything I want to last more than the one year life span of my planner.  This includes all the DIY Happy Planner dividers as well as photos, dashboards, half sheets, markers and tabs.

I also like to take the guts from my old planners and re-use them on other planners.  Laminating these items allows them to last for years.  I also laminated a Happy Planner brand to-do list and I use dry erase markers to make a new to-do list every day.  This way I’m not wasting a lot of paper/money.

When you have a laminator you can make a TON of your own Happy Planner accessories using scrapbook paper from craft stores, stickers, photos and ephemera you have around the house.  I have a friend who laminated a ton of paper keepsakes from a trip to Disney (like tickets, special passes and paper items she picked up from around the resort).  It turned out awesome!

|Step 5: Trim Excess Lamination & Round Each Corner|

After you’ve laminated your planner divider you’ll want to cut off excess lamination.  Leave about 1/3″ of excess lamination to remain around your planner divider. You don’t want to break the visible laminating seal that exists about a 1/4 of an inch all the way around your printable planner cover.

I highly recommend that you round the corners of your planner page marker unless you like being stabbed randomly every time you go to flip your planner divider over.

I use this inexpensive corner rounder that I found on Amazon.  It works great, cuts flawlessly through lamination and the price is a pittance.  I’ve found tons of uses for my corner rounder when it comes to my Happy Planner….I use it for DIY tabs, dividers, photos and any place I don’t want a sharp corner poking me or getting worn down.

|Step 6: Punch Your Planner Divider|

Using a planner hole punch you’ll punch out 4 holes on the provided white tab attached to the planner divider.  4 is the minimum number of holes I’d recommend…any less than that and you’ll probably see the divider shift/flop around too much to be all that useful.

|Step 7: Place Your DIY Planner Tab Divider in Your Planner|

See! It’s actually quite easy to make your own planner dividers!  Even if you don’t use our DIY free printable planner dividers you can make a HUGE selection of dividers for every season and every reason with an inexpensive laminator.

If you’ve made it all the way down here and haven’t found anything you like you should definitely check out all the FREE Printable DIY Planner Tab Dividers we have created for our readers over the years. You’re bound to find something you like there!

I hope you love these super cute, free printable planner tab dividers as much as I do!  Please leave me a comment below and let me know what you think so I can tailor future content!  Tell me what colors, images or quotes you’d like to see on a future planner tab template.  There’s a good chance I’ll find a way to fit it in!

Don’t forget to check out our tutorial on How to Make Your Own DIY Planner Covers.  If you’re interested in making your own planner covers you won’t want to miss this article that include FREE printable planner covers to experiment with!

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