01/16/2012 - Game Card/Toy Wire Notebook

This is a very simplistic project, but was fun to do. The game cards are from an old Magic Trolls game I intercepted from the garbage. The paper I just pulled out of our recycling bin and I found another use for the toy wire - hooray me!

Recycled Material: game cards, paper, toy wire
Other Material: none 
Tools: paper cutter, small hole punch, round pencil, long nosed pliers  

How I did it: I trimmed about 25 rectangles to the size of the game card using the paper cutter. If you don't have one, this can be done by hand with scissors or sneak into a FedEx Kinko's to use their fancy paper cutters. I made sure the printed side of the paper was facing down and used 2 cards, one for the front and for the back. I took a shorter piece of the toy wire (about 7" long) and wrapped it tightly around the round pencil to make the coil and ended up with 7 loops. I stretched the coil as evenly as possible to the length of the top of the cards and paper then evenly marked the placement for the holes on the back of the front cover and punched 7 holes. I used the cover as a guide, then took about 5 sheets of the paper and made them flush with the card and punched the holes in the paper. I continued this until all the sheets and the back cover were punched and put the covers and paper together. I started twisting the coil in by inserting one end into the first hole and started twisting the coil, guiding the end of the coil into each hole until I reached the end. I used the pliers to bend both ends inward about 1/4".

What I would do differently: I thought this was a cute little project that kids could do easily. They could use yarn or ribbon to tie it together, but this wire seems o.k. for kids to use since it is coated in plastic...unless you cut it, then it will have sharp edges and need to be filed down. Another idea would be to reuse the coil from a used notebook.