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.