Plastic with your latte?

A snowy Thursday is keeping me away from the Barn.  Grumble. Time to blog.

Back in December I had it in my head to make stuff out of discarded gift cards.  How many of you received one of these at holiday time? I did!  With no shame, I asked the people at the local Starbucks if they might hold on to the otherwise discarded cards when customers use up their card's balance.  They said "sure", inspired perhaps, by the mini notebook I showed them, made from two cards? This photo shows just a portion of the cards they collected for me in a few short weeks.  That's a lot of plastic.

Say what you want about Starbucks. They save their grounds for me in the springtime for my compost.  And you will agree that they have some great artists who design their cards.

This is my favorite.

Holiday themes abound.

So over Christmas vacation I hauled my newly acquired plastic pretties along with jewelry-making supplies on a visit to our pals in New Hampshire. You remember my young pal Talia from an April post? She is always up for a craft with me.  She jumped right into it, and within an hour she was sportin' some cool Starbucks earrings.

A Google images search, and a Pinterest search showed me oodles of creative folks making stuff from these pieces of plastic. Here are a few of my favorites.

Pick up something called a Pick Punch and make a ton of these beauties for your next jam session.

Bryan Berg, known as the Cardstacker, built a city skyline in celebration of Earth Day, from 22,000 recycled gift cards (although he usually stacks playing cards). 

 

  If you go to his site you'll see an entire hotel room that he created from hotel key cards.  

 Back to the realm of realistically-try-this-yourself, you might want to try making your own fancy paperclips or bookmarks by following the tutorial at Instructables.  I found them not easy to cut with an x-acto knife and I'm too lazy to get out my Dremel drill right now.

An etsy artist named Kim Baldwin at Lifeaccessories made this nice bracelet out of my favorite Starbucks card.  Swoon.

So, you've read THIS far down in a very long post, and you shall be rewarded.

 In  honor of my 1st Blogiversary, I will make a tiny notebook out of 2 recycled gift cards for each of you who leave me a message here on my blog. No, not on Facebook. No, not via email, but right here on the Barn of Opportunity comment log. Please celebrate the Barn of Opportunity by joining me in my first giveaway. While supplies last... which should be around my 2nd Blogiversary!