Zippers Galore

Here's a little gift I made for yet another anonymous (because she hasn't received it yet) friend. It's a zipper coin pouch- made from 8 small zippers, which I purchased a while back at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, one of my favorite places in the world (this is probably another one, if I ever get there to visit). Talk about imagined treasure- EBDCR takes the cake.

But I digress... I intentionally stitched this with a bright yellow thread and wanted it to look handmade so I made the stitches big and visible. There's no official opening to this little bag- all eight of the zippers function. Cool, no?

So Much Paper...

In hopeful anticipation that I'll someday finish my dissertation, I have been thinking about what I'll do with all that scrap paper. I mean, a dissertation, even printed double-sided, is an enormous amount of paper. And I'll definitely need to print out at least one less-than-final copy of it for proofreading purposes. So I'm looking ahead to the day when that happens (please, oh please, let it be closer than it feels right now...) Here are some useful links for paper crafts:

1. Two links for how to make your own paper:
Pioneer Thinking
Making paper with kids

2. Paper crafts for kids that don't involve actually making paper, just reusing it.

3. What one crafter does with her leftover paper.

4. In case you want to get technical.

5. Paper crafts galore!

Sun Jar

Not Martha notes some new ideas for a DIY sun jar (a rechargeable light in a jar), including Shrinky Sheet tags, LED lights to simulate fireflies in a jar, and glow-in-the-dark stars suspended in a jar to create a soft night light. I especially like how the last project uses a recycled glass jar.

What To Do With Leftover Business Cards

My friend Lara recently issued me a challenge. She's finished her Ph.D. program (I'm glad for her but pining away for my own end date as well) and has tons of leftover business cards. What can she do with them?

Well, I immediately thought about an article I'd seen on this very topic in ReadyMade magazine. A reader submitted the cool pop-up card shown above. The article also talks about business cards being used to create address books, clothing, clocks and hanging curtains. Here's a tutorial on Craftster for making a wallet- you could use the business cards where it calls for cardstock.

Although I currently don't have any business cards with which to try this idea, I was also thinking that you could make a really neat miniature photo album from them. Since leftover business cards usually indicate a life change of some kind, it could be cool to incorporate them into a gift that way.

Weigh in, fellow crafters! What would you do with 250 out-of-date business cards?