Geek Love

I was very fortunate that at my library, I used to have a tech person that kept everything - and I mean EVERYTHING. She retired almost a year ago now, but we still have all this old equipment taking up space. I'm talking Macs from the 80s. Yeah - that's something we're going to be using again real soon. Anyways - there were a lot of old keyboards, and since a lot of them didn't have the county inventory tags on them, we claimed for youth services.

If you haven't ever had the chance to do any deconstruction, do it. Now. It's very cathartic to rip something apart and keyboards are no exception. Frustrated with the tons of spam you get or the file you just lost? Rip apart a keyboard and you'll feel better.

So, how did I come to make this particular craft? Not to pat myself on the back, but this is an original creation. After seeing (and using) the heart emoticon, I decided I needed to make a valentine that said I {heart} you. (I can't type the actual emoticon here, because I did, and it messed up the html- this is a rewrite of this part of the post.) The green is part of the circuit board, the plastic "paper" is from the inside, and the letters are keys, of course, all ripped from the keyboards. The circuit board came that size, but if you have others that are larger, you should be able to cut them to size with scissors.

The tweens really liked this one, though apparently I don't have the most tech-savvy ones coming because it took them awhile to figure out what the letters said. If you can get your hands on old keyboards or computers, this is a fun one to try. Next time, I'm going to try to make something bigger using bits we ripped from some old CPUs.

Cassette tape wallets

Well after the Tween Programming workshop I attended yesterday, I am riding high on a wave of good feelings and am ready to get back to writing on here! A quick explanation: I went to a workshop yesterday, and before it began I was thumbing through the powerpoint presentation that had been printed out for us. I was quite surprised to find a number of pictures from this very blog on the slideshow! I said something to the presenter, the awesome Kio Fuller, and she told me she loved this blog! Sweet!

So one of my more recent projects that I thought was totally rad are these cassette tape wallets. Now you might be thinking to yourself, "Cassette tapes? Who has those?". Well - have you looked around your library? I had at least a drawer full of these things in my office from back when they would use them during storytime. I only use CDs or mp3s now, so having them around was only a waste of space until (ta-da!) I stumbled across this craft.

Step 1: Get a small screwdriver (like for glasses) and remove the screws

from the cassette. Some cassette tapes are glued together - esp. the professional ones. If you have any that were original bought as blanks, then those are the ones that have screws (and they're also the easiest to use in this case).

Step 2: Once you have the cassette taken apart, remove the magnetic tape from the inside.

Step 3: Take a zipper, preferably 12 inch, and (starting in the middle, where the magnetic tape would be exposed) glue it to the separate cassette sides. If you can't get a 12 inch zipper, a 9 inch one will do, but you'll have to glue some ribbon to the bottom of the wallet (the "bottom" being where you started and ended the zipper). Hot glue works best.

That's a really basic summary of how to do it. I'm not even sure if I had instructions, but really, if you look at the pictures, I think you can see what you're supposed to do.

As far as the reactions from my tweens? Well, I only had one attend the program. That's my biggest problem. I have plenty of cool ideas, but I don't have that many tweens actually show up. Anyways - the one who came really liked it, and when I put it up on my facebook wall, my friends went nuts over it, so I'm sure if you decided to try it at your library, it would be a big hit.