Easy to Make Mini Card Notepad

I thought of this project a couple of weeks ago when I saw CraftyPod's post about one of her Maker Faire projects. I recently became interested in book binding, and decided to give it a shot with two cards from one of my many deck of cards that I bought from Vegas for cheap. I don't know why, but I like collecting the dealer cards from different casinos. Anyway, I sacrificed one deck for this project.

Here's how I made it:

Materials:
- 2 cards from a deck of cards.
- paper (I used some used printer paper that had a blank side)
- contact cement (or other glue would probably work)
- some paper package tape
- some type of clamp (I used a chip clip and some binder clips)

How to:
1. I cut the paper into rectangles the size of the the cards. Stack up the paper and cut using an exacto knife.

2. Stack the paper together with the blank side all facing the same direction. Place the two cards you're going to use on both sides of the stack of paper. I like the back of the card showing on the outside.

3. Align the side of all of the papers and cards on at least one side. And clamp on opposite side so that the aligned side is exposed (because we're going to glue it)


4. Put a thin layer of contact cement on the exposed edge, and set it all aside for 5-10 minutes (to let the contact cement dry).

5. Once it's dry, put a small piece of paper packaging tape on the edge. You may have to cut the packaging tape so it isn't too big for the small notepad. I cut the tape to about 1 inch width and a length longer than the notebook. Fold down the tape and trim the edges.



And there you have it. I'd let it sit for a little while longer in case the glue isn't fully dry, but it should all hold in place.


These notepads are the perfect size to carry in your pocket. I love them already.

Making a Boomerang

Since I was young I've always wondered about how a boomerang worked but I never thought to look into actually making my own. My wondering was short lived and I was distracted enough by the next shiny object to never actually look into the "how". Recently, however, I was looking for the next cool project to try and thought hmmm... boomerang. Well, long story short, I found a website called dangerouslyfun.com who had easy to follow plans for boomerangs. So, I followed them. :-) It's actually pretty simple to do if you don't get into the engineering of making it perfect. I tried it a couple of times at the park and was happy enough to see it curve back towards me. I made a few more changes to try to get it to curve closer back to me. (I plan to test that out really soon).

At any rate, I followed pretty closely to the website with the exception of the airfoil not being as nice as the one shown (but that's due to impatience). Dangerouslyfun.com did such a good job in explaining and showing the tutorial of it all that I don't think I can do any better of a job, so I'm just going to share my pictures. :-)

Just a small note: I bought the wood at Michaels and seem to be able to get at least two boomerangs out of it and I used my scroll saw to cut it to shape before using an power sander to sand the airfoils down.



I'm hoping to test this out and take a video of the throws. Once I have one, I'll try to post it.

Good Luck in making your own boomerang, and do be careful as they do tend to come back after thrown -- don't forget to duck! ;-)

[Update: 6-7-09] I tried it out and it comes back -- for the most part. There seems to be a bit of a learning curve to get it to come back fully. Anyway, I tried to capture a video of the throws but I kept losing the boomerang on my camera (small digital cameras don't work very well when you're trying to track a small light colored boomerang in the sky). Oh well.

First Harvest of the Year

Hi all,

Sorry for being MIA... again. I hope to give you some good blog entries in the next couple of days to make up for it.

As a quick post, I thought I'd share that we were able to have a good initial harvest today from our garden. We made a salad of carrots, beets, spinach, beet greens, and romaine lettuce. Delicious. There really isn't anything better than getting your salad straight from the garden.


Along with that, here's how the tomato plant is doing. It's starting to slowly fall downwards to be a hanging plant. The leaves are a bit on the light side that concerns me a bit. I think I need to add more nutrients to the plant to help it out a bit, and we just moved it to get more morning sun.

More to come soon. Stay tuned.