Here@Hayne nothing goes to waste… What do you do with all that paper??

21 Dec Here@Hayne nothing goes to waste… What do you do with all that paper??

We end up with a lot of paper trash.  Whether it’s printing check sets for in-office review or printing submittal sets for the various jurisdictions we work with (can you believe that sometimes we need to print out as many as 7 full-size drawing packages and 11 reduced copies!!) we end up with a lot of paper that needs to be recycled… or in our case up-cycled!  As it is the holidays, we thought we would share some of our favorite ways to “up-cycle” our paper trash.

1. Use it as wrapping paper.

Use your old sketches and drawings sets to wrap your holiday gifts.  Want to jazz it up a little bit, add some festive ribbon!

Hmmm…. Old product library samples as coasters… Not a bad idea!

I think it needs a little something extra…

Perfect!

  2.  Make some origami ornaments.

Oh man, did you forget to get a gift for someone on your list?  Don’t worry!  Use your leftover paper to make origami ornaments.  Just follow along with these YouTube origami tutorials and come up with festive handmade gifts.  Just add some decorative ribbon to hang them on a tree!  We made a christmas tree, a star and of course a reindeer.

Origami Ornaments make great gifts!

Hey, is that Rudolph?

Very Festive!

3. Use it as Wallpaper.

Now you could do what we did and use some of our scrap paper to cover up one of the doors in our office or you could spend some time and design custom wallpaper with your sketches using Spoonflower.  What a great way to make an office wall pop with your work!

I wonder what happened to the door… #tuckernuck

Much Better!

4. Make a sketchbook.

Have your local print shop cut down and bind your old print sets into a custom sketch book (we made one in-house with just scissors, a hole punch and some twine).  Sketch ideas on the front and see some of your old work on the back.  When your done you can use the sheets for any of the above ideas.

OK… so not as clean as if we went to our favorite print shop… but still a great usable sketchbook!

Oh look there are some of our consultants…

5. Make a paper log.

You can always turn your old drawings into paper logs for your fireplace.  Just remember if you live in a fire hazard zone, like us in SOCAL, check your city or county for no burn days!

Look… we still have some more paper!

Now that the new year is fast approaching, clean our your office and up-cycle your paper trash!