Last week Colleen challenged me to make a craft from these mini-blind samples that she picked up at the Zero Landfill event. I knew I was thinking flowers from the get go, maybe a fan or something. I cut a few apart to get a feel for how they worked and bent and expanded when the paper was removed from them. I decided that they looked really good if you fold them in the middle and open them out into a circle. It kind of looked like a flower, kind of like an umbrella.

So then I worked on ways to adhere the edges of the blinds together. Every glue I tired either gummed them up, or came apart. Finally I settled on a ladder stitch with white thread. To keep the circle from turning into an oval I stitched the layers together at the center point. And that gave me the shape I was happy with.

Then I had to decide if I wanted to keep the white back on, or if I just wanted to use the colored layer in the front. I chose to do one of each to see which I liked better. In the end, I liked them both. Especially paired together, and that combination is what lead me to the final use of the wheel/circle/flower things I made. They look fantastic side by side so I hot glued them to a gift bag as a decoration for the graduation gift I’m giving to my Sister-in-Law.

Trash-to-Treasure Challenge round one- success!