Recycle Crafts as SWAPS- mini notepads

This was a challenge for me.  For two reasons:  SWAPs are supposed to be fairly small, and the criteria is that all the materials (or most of them) must be recycled/reused items.

So.

This is the easy one I settled on: mini notebooks.  With a credit card as my size guide, I went snipping.




























I save all my paper mistakes, misprints and old assignments with one blank side - with kids in school there are plenty of papers to use.  I used magazine pages for covers as well.

Here's another photo:

For some I punched flowers, dragon flies, feet, and four leaf clovers, each book has 15 or so pages, ten are regular copy/printer paper and the other pages are packing paper and construction paper.  Most of the construction paper is from things brought home from school, but some of it is from Elena's inside sidewalk chalk [many large pages of construction paper taped together in the size of one panel of our outdoor walk, made on a stormy day she set her heart on sidewalk drawing -this was an all day project that consumed all her attention, not common for E]. It hung in our hallway kid's gallery until it tore beyond repair, and Elena said I could do with it as I pleased, including throw it out.  I told her I would use it.  OK, mommy, make something good.   

We made larger versions of these for Daisy Scouts (1/4 letter sized notebooks).  I was pleased that most of the girls seemed to enjoy it.  And they got it. They recognized the magazine pages from the free ones that are available to military, they turned the papers over and said things like, My teacher tells us to use the back or, My mom gives me her old papers, too.  They enjoyed making their own special notebooks.