Liz Makes: Liz makes a newspaper clutch

This newspaper clutch was my first blog post. It's been a tough week on me and my family, so that's why I haven't been blogging as much. Hardly anyone has seen this post, so I figured I would repost it. Anyway, have a great week. I'll blog again as soon as I can.

My mom has inspired me to recycle as much as I can. My boyfriend Tyler works at the newspaper here in Albuquerque and brings home newspapers from time to time. When we're done reading them, I don't really like throwing them away, so I decided to reuse them.

Warning: if you choose to make this, know you'll be getting your hands dirty! Folding newspapers gets black ink on your hands like crazy. Don't worry though, it washes off easily.

Supplies needed:

Newspaper (how much depends on how big you want your clutch/bag)

Tape (both wide shipping tape and regular clear adhesive tape)

Scissors

Optional supplies:

Glue gun

velcro

(That's it! You probably already have all of these things in your home.)

Grab a two-page spread from your newspaper pile. Cut it in half, and then cut that half in half. You'll end up with one-fourth of what you started with.

Decide which way you'll fold your newspapers. You can either fold them "hot-dog" style, so the strip is long, or "hamburger" style, so the strip is shorter. Here I'll fold them "hamburger" style in order to have a smaller clutch.

Fold them however wide you want your strips to be, just make sure all of your strips are even. I folded mine so they'd have about a one inch width.

With a small piece of your thin clear adhesive tape, tape up the sides so it's closed.

Now grab that shipping tape.

Place a long strip of shipping tape over the strip of newspaper and fold the extra shipping tape over the sides.

You'll want to end up with at least 15-20 of these bad boys before starting to weave, and even then you might need to make some more. It took me 17 total to make this clutch.

Now for the fun/tricky part: weaving! Since I'm bad at planning, I make most of my crafts through trial and error.
I laid out all of my strips on a roomy flat surface to see what I could do. I used my craft table (aka my dining room table). Decide how big/wide you want your clutch. I made mine big enough so I could fold it in thirds (in order to have a flap closure) in the end.

Now start weaving! Tape your first vertical strip to all of the horizontal strips so they will stay in place. Now weave until it's full!

Tape all of the sides down with your regular clear adhesive tape so it's secure.

(You're almost done! )

Now tape up the sides of your clutch. Since you probably don't want the tape showing, tape under the weaving.

Tape over the weaving if it looks like you can get away with it, which is what I did.

If you want a secure closure, you can snag some velcro out of your craft stash. Hot glue on of the velcro pieces to the inside flap and the other velcro piece opposite of it.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I added a bow to mine, just because the clutch looked pretty plain without it. I just grabbed my already-warm hot glue gun and started gluing again. If you have two extra tape-covered newspaper strip then you're all set.

Grab one and fold it in thirds, like I did. Cut the second tape-covered newspaper strip down to a few inches (enough to wrap around the bow.)

Hot glue the short piece around the bow.

Now hot glue the bow onto the middle of the clutch. If you want your "bow" to have a "tail" then go ahead and cut equal strips of tape-covered newspaper and glue those down before-hand.