Thursday 19 December 2019

Card Sharp

My 'envelope punch board' has been working overtime recently, as I've been making boxes and packets for some of my gifts. But you always start with a square of card- so often I have narrow strips left over.
I kept putting these to one side - and then unexpectedly found a use for them last Thursday, when my fried Pam came round.
She works for CAP [Christians Against Poverty] and was preparing for a Christmas Meal which they were hosting for all their clients. 
"Oh, I've just remembered, I need an Icebreaker 'Table Game'" she said. I offered to help - it had to be something easy - for mixed ages and abilities. I suggested one I'd done with children - "What am I?"  You have a set of cards, with animals/birds/sea creatures on them. Each person has a card - and then the other people at the table ask questions [with yes/no answers] and try and guess what creature is on the card.

I began by quickly making a list of 50 creatures- farm animals [pig, cow...] minibeasts [ladybird, butterfly..] British wildlife [fox, hedgehog..] Jungle creatures [monkey, snake...] Sea creatures [shark, crab..] You get the idea. Then I cut up my strips into regular sized cards, and wrote a name on each. I made some little explanation slips, and bundled the cards into groups of 6. I made a little box using the punch board. The whole exercise took less than 45 minutes.
I was on a roll by then. I took some of my other strips, and using my triple-tag-punch, and a Fiskars corner snowflake punch, I made a whole box of gift tags, using up more of my strip trimmings.
I find it so incredibly satisfying to create something from the resources I already have, don't you?







7 comments:

  1. I definitely do! Well done to you for utilizing the materials you had. I tend to use left over strips for a variety of purposes but the first is for bookmarks for the kids at school-any coloured strips which people leave lying around, I always grab and there are always takers for them. Also, this year, I really organised my paperstash at school so I had an old broken zip folder of one of the teachers which I put all card coloured strips in and when one of the teachers recently said she was going to get classes to make thank you messages for our colleague whose last day is tomorrow (one of my best friends in school) to stick to a card- knowing that L is moving to Somerset, I suggested big cards were unwieldy and impractical given packing and I suggested she stick the messages into a small exercise book that could easily be transported. I then gave her the wallet of coloured strips to cut up for the kids to use. Incidently, I have probably saved 1000+ pieces of paper this term by printing most of my music sheets onto other people's mistakes and discarded paper. I regularly raid recycling bins and that feels good!

    Back to your game -it looks brilliant!!! What a fun idea. You are so clever! You could make revision card packs for GCSE students-they could buy a box of blanks to fill out too. The labels are cute too. I do the same with Christmas cracker ends too. You get a lovely patterned side and then a brown side for writing on.

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  2. You are so wonderfully creative! Great card game idea and love those gift tags!

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  3. Kezzie you are so resourceful. And I do so agree about those big thank you cards. It's lovely when children make them, but impossible to keep. Sticking messages in a little book is a brilliant idea.

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  4. I love the way you can whip up ANYTHING!

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  5. Bob might be a knackler good at knackling but you are a bricoleur adept at bricolage.

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  6. Perhaps in retirement we should open a little village shop in Norfolk called "Knackler & Brickler" [one would have to Anglicise the spelling]

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