champagne tastes on a beer budget?

Instructables has a great how-to on creating "the world's best writing pen" in under $20.

Anyone have any other money saving stationery or writing utensil tips?

[Via boing boing]

book 'em, frank

Stationery and craftiness collide in donovan's new tutorial, how to make a book out of envelopes. We think this is an awesome way to make the most of stationery whose envelopes outshine the actually paper, like these we recently bought from cavallini & co. Thanks to donovan's partner in crime, kathy, for bringing it to our attention.

lucky canadians

now listen up, class. do you live in toronto? we don't but if we did, we'd go to some of these workshops by natalie of papermusings. Check it out: Thursday, June 21, 7 to 9 pm

Project: Tied Up In Knots! ($30) Location: Urban Scrapyard (802 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto) Learn basic bookbinding techniques as you create a 6″ x 6″ ribbon-hinged scrapbook album from scratch.

Saturday, June 23, 11 am to 5 pm MINI Crafternoon Tea: An Indie Craft Show & Charity Tea Party - Featuring 20+ vendors, sweet eats & more!Location: nathalie-roze & co. (1015 Queen Street East [at Pape], Toronto)

Saturday, June 30, 11 am to 1 pm Project: The Fasten-ating Notebook ($30) Location: Urban Scrapyard (802 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto) Learn basic bookbinding techniques as you create a 5.5″ x 8.5″ refillable notebook bound with a prong fastener.

photo by Glen and Deanna Odland

HOW TO: accordion folder

check out this tutorial from papermusings about how to make your own mini accordion box. it's perfect for storing photos or, dare we say, your insanely unmanageable card collection. not that we would know anything about that, of course.

mother's day countdowbn: 2 days

Okay, it's crunch time. You have 48 hours to find/buy/order/make a gift for mom. Lucky for you, Wiki How has a bunch of tips for do it yourself mom's day present goodness. Along with these ideas, why not tuck in a hand made greeting card? Here's one of our old tricks: 1) Take an old picture of you and mom (or, just her, just you or a picture of something that's special to the two of you) 2) Blow it up and xerox on some card stock 3) Fold the paper in half horizontally (hamburger style) with the image on the inside of the fold 4) Write something witty or just "Happy Mother's Day, I love you" in sharpie (play up the handmade aspect) on the outside and you're done! Now, the presents... 1) Mom's day without spending a lot of money 2) Give your mom a "day off" 3) Make a photo slideshow 4) Make mom breakfast Does anyone else have tips for last minute mom's day gifts? [Photo provided by Matt McGee]

glory comes in 8 1/2 x 11

Office workers everywhere, access your secret crafty side and take notice: Instructables has a great How To on making your own journal from used office paper. Best let the geniuses speak for themselves: "Here I will give a simple bookbinding tutorial using a Japanese stab-binding technique for making blank books from paper that is printed on one side. These books are useful for all kinds of notes, and tell an interesting story about the place they came from. I work in the computer lab at my school, where a lot of printer paper is wasted. I go through the recycle bin to find my papers." So stuff your shirts full of "liberated" pages from the office scrap box and go forth with a song in your heart and a paper cut somewhere unsavory.

it's a mystery

If you have secrets (top secret secrets) but want to share them with a select few, you might want to purchase this invisible ink ($16 from the Library Shop). Just be sure to instruct the receiver to expose the paper to some heat (don't torch it, try a light bulb)--the invisible ink will turn blue and then disappear again when the ink cools off. Beats swallowing the paper or implementing some sort of self-destructive device a la Mission Impossible. But hey, if you don't have $16 but still want to share your secrets, check out these instructions from Wiki How on how to make a secret note. [Invisible ink found via Cool Hunting]

orange you glad?

it seems like we can't get enough of How about Orange lately. First there was our post about downloadable PDF birthday cards, and now Orange has instructions about how to make cool homemade envelopes from any paper you want. Photo on the computer? Print it out! Off-season wrapping paper? Consider it done. Our credit card bill? The further from us it goes, the better! HOW TO-make envelopes from patterned paper [craftzine]

HOW TO: paper gift box

So let's say we you have tons of stationery laying around and we you need something to do with it. So we you decide to get all MacGyver-esque and transform the stationery into something useful. Well, voila, instructions via instructables on how to take paper from its flat state to three dimensions.