Recycled Notebooks
From LoveToKnow Crafts
The idea of making your own notebooks, as described in Your own notebook, can also be an environmentally-conscious craft.
The Project
When I was in college, a student environmental awareness group once gave out homemade notebooks made completely of recycled materials at a student activities fair.
They used cardboard that would have otherwise been thrown away, like cereal boxes, for the covers. They also used recycled paper on the inside – computer misprints, advertisements, flyers, etc. This meant you could often only write on one side of the paper in your notebook, but it was fine for the purpose of taking notes in class or writing rough drafts of papers.
While I'm sure the student group had to buy a skein or two of yarn to make dozens of notebooks at the same time, if you're doing this project at home, you can easily use stray scraps of yarn or heavy string that would otherwise go to waste to bind your pages together.
Notes
There was a fun “do-it-yourself” feel to the end product, but if you don't like the idea of a Toucan Sam notebook, you can use the plain side of the box as your cover and decorate to your heart's content.
Kids may be too self-conscious about using recycled notebooks at school, unless everyone makes one as part of a class project. For some, though, it may be just the chance to stand out from the crowd they've been seeking.
Even if your teenager is mortified by the idea of bringing a “pre-used” notebook to school, you can still keep a few around the house for taking down phone messages, making to-do lists and so on.
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