The next several blog posts will detail the Handmade Christmas 2009 projects. The overarching theme of this year's handmade adventures is that I did not take enough pictures. As usual, things got a little frantic in the end, and we finished things just in time to wrap them up. Maybe this year I'll be more organized and get things done earlier (ha!).
The floppy disk pen holder idea came from Instructables, which I think is one of the coolest websites out there. Users contribute detailed tutorials for making all sorts of things, and projects range from easy to impossible (like those involving electric wiring abilities). I mostly discover projects from them in one of two ways: 1) from the weekly email they send from Instructables, called Weekend Builder, and 2) when projects are featured on the Craftzine blog.
Sometime in the fall I visited our IT department at work and they generously gave me 50 floppy disks. The worst part of this project, by far, was getting the stickers off the disks. A few peeled off on the first try, but most had to be removed with a combo of soaking in warm water, Goo Gone, and nail polish remover.
The pen holders are held together with cable ties. Floppy disks come with two holes already, but two more needed to be drilled to accommodate the cable ties. I used the handy-dandy Dremel to drill the holes. The disks are so thin, this wasn't a hard step in the process.
I got a multicolored pack of cable ties from the local hardware store. Here's a stock photo of what they look like:
This was a really quick and easy project, minus the sticker removal. Basically you just attach four disks together in a square to make the sides and then attach the fifth disk to the bottom. Once they are all attached, and the cable ties are tightened down, just cut off the long ends of the ties and it's done.
I was able to make 10 pen holders from the 50 disks. We gave them all away, so some day if I find more disks I'd like to make some for us.
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