Beauty in a Kleenex box

Have you ever stopped and looked around your house to see what kind of stuff you just have that could be great with your crafts? This week I noticed my empty kleenex box... as I was cutting it apart to grab the "Box Tops for Education" piece, I started really looking at the design.

Now I have a stash of pieces to use as a base for tags or backgrounds for embelishments on cards or scrapbooks - and it didn't cost me anything but about 20 minutes of my time.

Have you found anything recently and were surprised by what you had?

Weaving a Magazine Coaster

Last week I was browsing the web for oragami patterns (I never actually end up where I am planning to go...) and came across a blog post on weaving coasters from magazine pages.

I decided to try it on one of the magazines I had lying around. It took me about 4 hours to get this far, but it felt nice - with unpacking boxes, yard work, building projects, etc, I haven't had a chance to really feel productive creatively.

Mine shows a lot more wear than the pictures on the other blog post, but I guess it is one of those practice makes perfect things...