Tabs are a handy thing.  Whether on dividers in a planner, dividers in a card box, or individual tabs to attach to pages of a book of some kind, tabs can help with organization.  But making nice-looking ones can take a bit of fiddling.  That’s where a punch comes in.  (Heads up: This post is going to be a bit long and image-heavy.)

Basic Tab Punch (Pros & Cons)

I initially looked at the simple Tab Punch from We R Memory Keepers.  This has the advantage of being super-simple — you just punch out a tab like you would use a standard hole punch.  But it isn’t very versatile.

What you can’t readily tell from the packaging is that this punch doesn’t punch the whole two-sided, foldover tab.  It punches a single-sided insert for use with the clear foldover tab stickers.  (You can make foldover tabs with it, but it takes a bit of finagling, and the bit at the bottom that extends down and attaches the paper isn’t very deep.)

Tab Punch (File) by We R Memory Keepers | includes punch and six tab shaped adhesive stripsWe R Memory Keepers Bulk Buy (3-Pack) Tab Stickers 12 Pack File, 2 inch TABS-42377We R Memory Keepers 0633356631057 Board Punch Board & Punch-Tab

Tab Punch Board

The Tab Punch Board is vastly more versatile — and not a whole lot more expensive.  It’s also fairly compact.

It might look a little complicated at first, but it’s actually not that complicated once you’ve been through the process once, in part because of its  incredibly thoughtful design.

Here’s what comes in the package:

A Closer Look at the Tab Punch Board

Let’s take a closer look at the Tab Punch Board itself, and all its parts.

One of the first things you’ll note is that it’s self-contained.  The instructions are separate in the package, but everything else is all-in-one.  A couple of the pieces are removable, but they still store in or on the board itself.  This little guide:

is one of the removable parts.  (Also probably the easiest to lose, because of its size and translucence.  Be sure to put it away when you’re not using it!)  It’s used in the pairs of holes at the bottom of the board (bottom-right of the image above) as a guide for where the edge of the paper goes when punching — either to punch out a tab or to round corners.

When you’re not using it for these purposes, it stores away above the measurement guides for the center tabs.

Those guides help line up the center points for small, medium, or large tabs (note the S, M, L indicators) on dividers with the lengths indicated.

The blue square doohickey is the actual punch, and to the right of it you’ll find the guides for punching the mirrored side of the tabs — small, medium, or large.

The blue arm across the back half of the board raises and lowers.  This is the trimming portion of the board.

I usually find it easier to rotate the whole board when I get to this part of the process, so the back is facing me.  Here I’ve rotated the board and raised the arm, but I’ve also removed the trimming blade (the only other removable part of the punch board) so it can’t tumble out on me.

In the photo you can also see the groove in the board along which the trimming blade runs.  The underside of the blade looks like this:

The blue arm has a groove in it, which you can see here a little bit, because I’ve tucked my fingertip down inside it:

To use the trimmer, you’ll put your paper under this arm, lower the arm (and hold it down firmly), then run the blade along the track to trim the paper.

It’s spaced a proper distance from the center ridge of the punch board to just accommodate the depth of the tab(s), so you don’t have to try to line anything up.

Creating a Tabbed Divider

Okay, there are kind of a lot of steps to this, but they’re pretty quick when you’re not trying to explain them as you go.  (It took me way longer to resize the photos for this post than to take them!)  So don’t be intimidated.

For each tab, after your paper is cut to size, you’re going to punch the left side of the tab, then the right side, trim the excess, and then round the corners of the ends of the dividers.  (Rounding the corners is optional, but it makes it look more polished.)  That’s it.  But I’m going to walk you through each step, pointing out the punch board elements as we go.  (I didn’t have a current project to work on, so I used some construction paper for these demos instead of my good paper.  It doesn’t punch quite as cleanly as quality paper does.  Just so you know the rough edges are the fault of the paper, not the punch.)

Starting with the left tab (for a divider with the tab at the end), we first punch the left side, by lining the paper up with the little translucent blue guide…

…then pressing down on the square punch lever.  You get this:

Now we’ll remove the little blue guide doohickey so the paper can slide freely, flip the paper over, and line it up with the small tab guide.  (Obviously, use the medium or large tab guide if those are what your project calls for.  We’re going to be using the small tabs throughout.)

Once you’ve punched this, you should have something that looks like this:

It’s a lovely, fancy, tab, right?  With an awkward bunch of excess paper sticking up across the rest of the upper edge of the paper.  That’s where the trimmer comes in.  Slide the paper under the trimmer arm, with the tabbed edge flush against the center ridge of the punch board.

Holding the arm down firmly, insert the blade in the groove and slide it across to trim the excess.

(I like to cut away from the tab so if I accidentally go a little too far, I’m going off the page, not cutting into my tab.)  What you should now have is this:

It looks fine like this, but we can polish it up a bit by rounding that corner at the far right.  Going back to the main punch, be sure your blue doohickey is positioned for corner rounding rather than for tab trimming, and punch one more time.

Now your divider is finished, and it looks like this:

The process is identical for a right tab; you’d just flip it when you’re done, so be sure if your paper is one-sided and/or directional that you start with it facing the correct direction to end up the way you want.

Punching a center tab is the same basic process, but the way you line it up is slightly different.  You’ll punch the left side of the tab by lining it up with the measurement guide along the left-front portion of the board.

The left edge of the paper should line up with the guide for the tab size (small, medium, or large) you’re using, and the length of the overall paper edge.  Here I’m working with a 6-inch piece of paper and making small tabs, so I’m lining up with the 6-S.

Once you’ve punched it, it looks like this:

Flip it over and punch the other side of the tab exactly like you did for the other tab – by lining it up with the “small” tab guide on the right.

It’s looking a little crazy, right?  Now we just have to trim the excess.

It’s easiest for me to cut the right side off, then flip it and cut the other end, rather than trying to cut from right to left.  The result is this:

Then round the corners.

And you have a finished tabbed divider.

Here you can see the two we’ve made for this set.  I could easily duplicate the process we used for the first one and make a third divider to go on the right, and have a set of three.

But What About In-Between Tabs?

You can punch tabs at any point along your paper’s edge — but if you’re not punching them right at the ends or in the center of an exact-inches page, it takes a little math and a little finagling to figure out where to punch.  This vlogger suggested a hack to make it easier:

In case you don’t want to watch a video, I’ve done photos for this, too.  Basically, you’re going to take a few minutes of prep to add a couple extra markings to your board, which you can then use for placing tabs in any project you want.

Start by getting a 4-inch piece of paper.  (Larger is okay, too, as long as it’s a size that’s already marked on the board.)

(That’s the We R Memory Keepers Journal Guide I’m using to measure.) 

Mark the center point of the paper.

With the guide out of the way, insert the paper into the punch and line it up.  (In the photo, I have it lined up just a little bit “off,” so you can see the markings.  Line it up exactly when you’re doing this.)

What you should see is that the left edge aligns with the 4-inch, small tab mark, and the center mark you made on the paper is just at the right edge of the blue punch square.  That’s the center point of a small tab.  Now shift the paper to the right so the left edge matches up to the medium tab mark.

See how your own mark shifted?  The idea is that you can now mark your board where that mark is, and know that this is the center point of a medium tab.  Shift once more to the right so the left edge aligns to the “large” marking.

And as before, you can mark your board here and know where the center of a large tab should go.  Now, I haven’t marked mine yet.  I’m planning to mark my board with washi tape so it’s permanent-but-not-permanent, if you know what I mean.  But it would look something like this:

So then what you would do is find where you want the center of your tab to be, line it up with the appropriate mark, and punch, then flip and line up to the small, medium, or large guide on the right.

Tabs Only

What if you don’t want a divider?  What if you just want tabs?  You can do that, too.  You’ll need to trim your paper first so it’s only the width of the tabs you need.  (I measured this, but I’ve misplaced my notes.  Hopefully I’ll find them and can add that information here.)  Then you’ll punch the tab and cut the whole thing off with the trimmer.  For a small tab, I used a strip of paper 1-3/4 inches wide.

As for the very first tabbed divider we did, punch the left edge.

Flip it over and, with the blue guide out of the way, line it up to the “small” tab guide and punch the other side.

The end result looks like this:

Now put it in the trimmer and slice the whole thing off with the trimmer blade.

To get this:

This gives you something similar to what the Tab Punch produces.  It’s just one piece; it can’t “sandwich” anything.  You might use this if you wanted to add a contrasting color or print to one of the tabbed dividers you’ve made, or something of that sort.

If you want to make a foldover divider, you’ll need to fold the paper first. Start with the same kind of strip you had before, but fold one end over.  Fold over a bit more than you think you need, because it’s better to have a little too much than to come up short, and they can be a little deeper than they look.

Insert the folded end into the punch.

Punch both sides as before, to get this:

Now you can trim the edge…

…and get this:

Use glue stick on the back, or double-sided adhesive, or use a Xyron Create-a-Sticker or something of that nature to add adhesive to the back and attach to your page.

What Else Can You Do?

The things you make don’t all have to be literally tabs.  If you start with a strip like we just did (without the fold), and punch the top into tabs but round the bottom corners, it makes a great bookmark.  A shorter version can be used as tags for Christmas gifts and the like.  Point is, you can get creative.

What will you make with the Tab Punch Board?