Coasting along

Unlike the adorable tortoise, this project will be moving quite quickly.

ON a recent visit to the photocopy shop, I told the boss that I managed to recycle and combine the sheets of plasticized paper wrappers he’d passed to me into a multi-layered folder. “Jolly good! Here are some more for you to use,” he said as he gladly rolled up a few more of the sunny yellow sheets.

This time round, I decided to capitalize on the waterproof quality of the paper and made coasters for mugs. Squares are folded into shapes for the head, feet and tail. This is similar to the way needle-workers fold fabric pieces to hide the raw edges before joining them into mats. As the paper is plastic-coated on one side, it takes a while for the glue to set. Use a rubber-band to hold the folded pieces together as you work on the squares. Leave them aside to let the glue dry.

Another design variation is to use eight of these folded pieces around the circle and form a starburst, like the one that the mug rests on in the photo.