When I was in high school, I got it into my head that I was going to take up scrapbooking. This made a lot of sense to me because the way that I journaled was by taping important things into a spiral notebook, so when I had big life events like family vacations that resulted in lots of little important things, why not collect all of them in a scrapbook? Also, I love paper goods! Having another reason to hoard them would be awesome! ...right?
Well, 7 years later, the result of that notion is a huge collection of scrapbooking materials, around 12 plastic sleeves of events to be scrapbooked and maybe a grand total of 3 scrapbook pages.
What does this have to do with my friend Sara, you may ask? One simple thing: PAPER.
I had a whole lot of colorful 12"x12" sheets of scrapbook paper just lying around in a plastic sleeve. So I decided to make a countdown chain for Sara for her birthday, counting down to... her next birthday! (She's turning 21 next year and is pretty stoked)
The process is really simple. First, cut your strips. I eyeballed them, since I don't have a rotary cutter or a paper trimmer. Shoot for between 1" and 2" thick. I cut three or four pieces of different-colored paper at a time so that I could alternate colors.
Then, get comfortable and start stapling/taping/gluing. I would suggest stapling, but I ended up using tape because I recently moved and my stapler is nowhere to be found.
I wrote the date on each ring, so that if she forgot to rip one on any specific day, she wouldn't have to count to figure out how many she should rip! Also, this helped me ensure that I made the right number of rings. Every ten days or so, I added a fun fact/historical date, just to spice the chain up a bit.
Here it is in all its colorful glory:
Once it's all done, all you have to worry about is transporting it. It ended up betting shoved in a huuuuuge gift bag and sitting in my lap on the bus between Seattle and Portland. When it was delivered, it was happily received:
Happy birthday, Sara!
