Note Pad

Our shopping basket seemed to take foreverrrrrr to finish, but that was only because a few of my disabled friends renewed their love for sanding and painting. It was a good thing, for the results were so good we decided to give the baskets to our mothers for Mothers’ Day. But it wasn’t quite Mothers’ Day yet so we had to make something to add to the present.

A note pad for shopping lists became a happy addition to the basket.

An Old Idea, Recycled for Another Purpose

The idea for this pad is a miniaturisation of a trick I used with junior woodwork students. They would never bring paper and pencil to class. They always lost notes I gave them. So, I had them make a simple note pad onto which they could clip pieces of A4. The wooden clip board was regarded as pretty cool, so it raised the status of any notes or drawings my students took while I spoke with them. I just had to keep a ream of A4 paper in my store and the kids always had paper to use.

The pad was personalised with a pyropen as each student wrote their own name on it. Once the pyropen was put away, the personalisation continued with whatever writing implement they had to hand! To make this little note pad into a Mothers’ Day thing we wrote Mum on it and stuck on a flower.

Have Fun!

It will be great if a teacher or two see this original idea of mine and use it among their students. But it will be sad if a commercial parasite takes it and exploits it for profit. Look to future blog entries for variations on this theme.

It is possible to make these pads with clever clips on top, but in this miniature case it is better to keep it simple. Also, complexity is never going to work for my disabled friends and I will only be setting them up for failure if I create work that requires fine dexterity! Their challenge in this work will be slipping the ply bar, just right, under its clip. And then getting the flower into the right spot.

The strength of the clip can be varied by: length of cut, width of cut, and thickness of ply. It is a fun little project to play with!