Another Valentine Tutorial--Paint Chip Note Pads

I ran across this idea, or maybe Tania brought it to my attention, on the internet someplace and just had to give it a try. It requires paint chip strips that you find anyplace where they sell paint that provide choices of colors for you to pick from. All the paint sellers within a 50 mile radius of my home may be wondering what became of all their pink and red paint chip cards! Are there really THAT many people painting rooms red and pink???!!! No - - I pilfered them for my own devious purposes! HaHaHaHaHaHa (interpret this as one of those devious theatrical laughs while rubbing one's hands together in glee!!)

So, here you see a collection of supplies needed to create paint chip notepads. Paint chips, of course, note pads which you probably have an abundance of (I know I have stacks of them stashed in drawers every place!) ruler, bone folder, stapler & paper cutter(last 2 not shown) or scissors. The pink heart scrapbook paper is just for an attractive backdrop. Make a crease on one end of the paint chip about 3/8 from the end & fold, using bone folder or your fingers. You'll see that one end of the strip has numbers and this is the end I used. That way, when you fold the strip over to form the pad, the names of the colors will be right side up. I got negligent on a few that I made and didn't notice I was folding the wrong end, so the names are upside down. Not a BIG problem, but it's nice to be able to read the colors.

After you've creased the short fold, fold the other end of the strip over so it will tuck under the short fold just a little bit. Just make a finger fold here--no need to use the bone folder.

Now you need to do a little measuring and cut some pieces of notepad paper to fit inside the folded paint chip cover. You want the pages to slip under the short folded end so you can catch them with a staple.

Here you see the folded cover.

And here are some pages I've trimmed out on my paper cutter.

And, voila!, here are the pages stapled inside the cover!

Now I have an assortment of little notepads ready to decorate.

Aren't they cute?!

I seemed to have a shortage of stickers or other valentine decorations, so I used some rubber stamps to add a little Valentine feeling to them.

I love this "Be Mine--Or Else" stamp!

The paint strips above were short ones. I also pilfered some longer strips, so I made these pads a little longer.

And since there was a little more room for a larger writing surface, I decided to make use of the decorative aspect of the note pads I was using. These pads were wide enough to cut down the center lengthwise & have 2 strips to use. I used the side with the floral design & words "shopping list" in some of the pads.

And in some others I used the other strip which had a butterfly design. I just used a couple of decorated pages and then cut plain sheets for the rest of the pages in the pad, to make the design pages go further. In the meantime, since the time I started this project and this point, I was able to pick up some cute stickers. (at Wal-mart, in case you wonder where I found them!) So I used some of them to decorate one side of these pads and stamped cute valentine images on the other side.

Now aren't these cute little buggers?!

They'd be fun to enclose with valentines, to use at places at a valentine party, something to enclose with items you sell, if you are an Etsy or eBay seller, hand them out at club meetings, to your workmates, you name it!! They're kind of addicting when you get started making them. They'd be a fun activity to do with kids--at Girl Scout meetings, etc. The ideas are endless!