Recycled Coffee Cup Post-It Notepads

Here's a tutorial for an optional way to make my Post-It Notepads , using recycled coffee cups to make the covers instead of cardstock!

I love creative ways of making new things out of materials that would have otherwise been thrown away!

Materials & Tools:

• Coffee cup
• tissue paper (napkins with pretty patterns/colors work too)
• Diamond Glaze glue
• Post-It notes
• Rubber stamps, paper, or other art/papercraft supplies to decorate
• Bleach (to disinfect & clean coffee cup)
• Scissors or paper cutter
• Iron & ironing board
• Ruler
• Folding tool *optional
• Sanding block (to "distress") *optional

Soak the cups with a little bleach and water overnight. This cleans the inside of the cup and helps break down the glue too.

Take the cup apart and flatten it. Use an iron to melt the wax coating inside the coffee cup to stick the tissue paper to the inside of the cup.

Trace a rectangle (7 1/8 inches by 3 1/4 inches.) over the cup's printed surface to make a pretty cover. Then cut it out.

Make creases at 3 1/2 and 3 6/8. This is where the folds will be. (I know... It's a Martha Stewart tool. I caved and bought it.... but with a 50% coupon!)

Decorate the book...inside or out with what ever you want! (I like to use rubber stamps!)

Run a small amount of Diamond Glaze glue along the fold line to glue in the Post-it notes.

I use a sanding block to distress the edges to give it more character.

And there you have it! A post it notebook made using your coffee cup!

You can make lots of these in a short amount of time. These are all the Post-it note book covers I made on my first day off this summer! I just love to make these and I usually give them away, but I am going to try to sell some at my daughter's craft show booth in Lyndonville on the 4th of July!

I'v started collecting coffee cups to make these. Some cups work better than others. Obviously paper cups work much better than styrofoam based ones (and I haven't even tried tackling plastic based ones!). I particularly like Starbucks and Tim Horton's cups. If you're at a coffee shop in the Rochester area and some lady asks you for your coffee cup, it may just be me!

Happy crafting!

Post-It Notepads (extended tutorial)

Here is a cleaned up and extended tutorial for my Post-It Notepads...

Step 1:

First cut your base card stock 7 1/8 inches by 3 1/4 inches. (I used black...since a friend, who was destashing her scrapbooking supplies, gave me a lot of this thick, sturdy, black cardstock.) Crease at 3 1/2 and 3 6/8. (See picture above.)

Step 2:

Create Flowers or circles from punches or what ever design you want. You can even use rubber stamps, markers, geometric shapes, whatever you want! (This is the fun and creative part!)

Step 3:

Glue a 3 by 3 piece of paper on top of the black cardstock (I used lime green), then glue on your embellishment (I used green & yellow paper flowers).

Step 4 (Optional):

If you want your inside cover to be a pretty pattern or a different color from the base cardstock, you can glue some patterned/colored paper on the inside of the cardstock cover.

Step 5:

Finally, glue the spine of the 3 inch Post-It Note pad into the area where you creased for the folds. (OR, alternatively, you could glue the pad to the bottom of the inside of the booklet, but I recommend gluing the spine.)

And there you have it! A cute little Post-It NoteBook to pretty up your regular old boring Post-Its! You can make lots of them with different designs. You can even personalize them. It's a quick and easy project and can be a great little handmade gift!