the mothers day gifts

For Mother's Day this year, our Grandma's got note pads. I've been thinking about this project for a long time.  

{In high school I took this journalism class that was supposed to be telecommunications, but ended up being a joke. We were supposed to be writing copy, filming and using the school's studio to compile news reports, etc. It ended up being a joke; one of those classes that they give to kids just to keep them out of trouble. No real curriculum, just 'keep these kids from failing every subject so they can graduate'. There were two of us in the class who had specially selected the class based on the course description and were rather disappointed. I think we wrote letters to the principal about it. We ended up spending about 2 class periods in the darkroom (I remember we were unsupervised in the darkroom, because there was lots of kissing) and 1 class making notepads. Other than that, I think we sat around and talked  while the teacher watched football footage. -but I digress.} 

I had the kids draw small pictures to go at the top of the pages.  You could use regular sized artwork and shrink it down yourself.  I had the pieces of their art cutout and glued to a regular size copy paper, but you could see the cut lines when we copied them.  I ended up tracing their work so it was all on one sheet.   You will need to make lots of copies of this artwork.

We divided our page into sixths.  You could do a quarter size notepad easily too.  The only special item you need is called padding compound.  I bought mine at Blicks art supply.  Turns out teachers get a discount there!  Some office supply stores will make these for you, but the bottle is going to make hundreds of notepads and was under $20 without the discount.

I made enough copies of our artwork so that our notepads each had 60 pages.  I wouldn't go less than that, but could certainly go more.  Cutting needs to be as close to exact as possible.  The ones we made in highschool were cut all at once with a crazy large paper cutter.  This lets the pages be exactly the same size and exactly lined up. 

My home paper cutter worked fine enough.  We had six different page styles in ours and we wanted them mixed up.  We separated the different styles out and then put the pages in the order we wanted.

Next, you need to assemble your pile and tap the top edge so all the pages are tidy and straight as possible.  Use binder clips or some type of clamp to hold the pages together with out moving around.  You could maybe rig up some rubber-bands or clothes pins.  The padding compound gets painted on the end where the pages need to stick together.  I gave ours two coats just to make sure.  Lay these out to dry so that the wet end hangs off the edge of the table. It dried pretty quickly, but I left them overnight.

Remove the clamps are you are ready to go.  We wrote little notes and colored on the front pages and signed them.  We tied a ribbon around, but attaching a pretty pen or something would be nice too.   I'm going to use this same idea for a teacher appreciation gift next year and maybe a father's day gift too!  I'm thinking I can use this padding compound for some things for school too. 

I'm linking up to some of these fine parties this week:

 Made by Little Hands Mondays @ delicate CONSTRUCTION Wednesday's Kids Get Crafty @ Red Teg Art's Blog, Tuesday's Show and Tell blog hop ad ABC and 123,  Tot Tuesdays at Delicious Ambiguity,  For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars

Made by You Mondays @ Skip to my Lou,

Tutorial Tuesdays @ Hope Studios,   Anti-procrastination Tuesdays @ New Nostalgia, Talented Tuesdays @ My Frugal Family,  Get Your Craft on Tuesday @ Life as Lori,

Tooth Your Horn Wednesdays@ Silly Little Sparrow,  Whatever Goes Wednesday @ Someday Crafts,  Show and Tell Wednesday @ Blue Cricket Design, We did it Wednesday @ Sew Much Ado

Strut Your Stuff Thursday @ Somewhat Simple,   Look at me, I'm so crafty @ It's fun to craft,

Feature Yourself Fridays @ Fingerprints on the fridge,  Fantabulous Fridays @ Momma's kinda crafty,  Fridays I'm crafty Party @ So You Think You're Crafty,  Fibers on Friday @ Visions of Sugar Plums,  Christmas in July Fridays @ Just Another day in Paradise,  Fabric Fun Fridays @ Cheap Chic Home,  Creative Girl fridays @ The Girl Creative,