Wrapping paper becomes placemat – from Sunset magazine

Often think wrapping paper is too beautiful to recycle? It’s easy to turn the prints into placemats (or desk blotters!) with a copy shop laminating machine.

How-to: At a copy shop, use a paper cutter to trim paper to 10 ½ by 16 ½ inches for each placemat. Laminate each piece, leaving 1/2 inch or more of plastic laminate on each side. Using a paper cutter, trim each side of the placemat, keeping ¼ inch of plastic laminate as a border. With an edge trimmer or scissors, round each corner.

Closet becomes office

No room for workspace? Convert a closet into a home office―complete with hide-the-clutter doors.

How to do it: Empty a closet and remove the closet pole. Move a desk, or thin table into the space, allowing enough room to close the doors. Use a dining chair as a desk chair.

Willing to invest? Install a custom built desk surface and floating shelves

Okay:  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this idea.  For anyone that DOESN’T know this about me, I am an AVID Scrabble player.  Biggest day?  Beating my mom at Scrabble.  Doesn’t happen very often, but when it does?  AWEsome.  This outdoor Scrabble board is pretty cool!

 

Make a wood frame, then poured concrete and scored it into 3¾-inch squares separated by ¼-inch joints.

After the concrete had cured for one month, she colored the squares using water-base concrete stains.

McAuliffe then made 100 3¼-inch square letter tiles from baseboard trim.

She found precut, adhesive-backed vinyl letters and numbers at a sign shop, stuck them on the tiles, and sealed each one with spray lacquer.

The lightweight letters, which are stored in a canvas bag, fit on metal trays made by McAuliffe’s friend, metal artist Crystal Weber.

Games go late on summer evenings. “You get better words playing outside,” McAuliffe says.