Today's Inspiration II: Paper Coasters

In keeping with April's green goals to avoid buying new craft supplies, I decided I needed to de-shelve an idea 'from the vault' and turn a green inspiration into reality.

Thankfully in the last week I had come across Jessica Jones' recycled magazine coasters (here) that only require 6 pages from a magazine. And I do have magazines around (believe it or not!), just right for the job.

Trust me, you want to use her tutorial for the instructions. It's not quite origami, but you do have to make multi-step folds. The six starter pages are halved, making 12 rectangles. Those twelve rectangles are folded in half, then into thirds, and they will eventually look like these 12 Vs.

The Vs are woven together, like a double-sided pie crust. Six down and six to go...

Unlike Jessica's instructions, I did not cut any of my loose ends. For instance, the tab that's bent up in the photo below, I refolded back under the square with the red checks. For some of the ends that were edges, I tucked back into the center itself.

I tried to expose the most colorful sides of the paper on the topside of the coaster. The underside, seen above, is practically all typeset. If I were to make more of these coasters in the future, I would definitely make a few dozen strips first, then match them up by color family before weaving.

So, critique of the final product. It was a moderately fun activity. Not as much fun as, say, browsing the internet for cool craft projects, but I considered it an exercise for the hands, and for the mind as well. My daughter's opinion? "You did a really good job, mom." Then she asked if she could put her drink on it. Passes the test.