Phew! What a packed past week it was-- unexpected, but a very happy week for me that put February 2012 on top my favourite months so far this year for me. Some lovely things happened to my Etsy store, and I'm very very thankful for God's blessings. I'll share those stories in another post, coz I'm so excited to share this tutorial with you first! 

Who misses floppy disks?? Ok not me, because there's not much data you can keep in it (my husband has this story of his teenage years, and boys being boys, you can guess what they passed around in school in stacks of floppy disk. Anyone? Haha).

But, I love me a good old school flava (checkout how I spelled flava). In fact, for our wedding bands, my husband and I decided to have binary numbers that spelled out our initials, and we got them made by a wonderful silversmith-- Lyndsay of Idle Hands Designs. So floppy disks will always have a charm to us!

Anyway, HEY. Let's do this whole tutorial in Courier.

Ready to make your own floppy disk coasters?

Insert disk into Drive A:

You will need:

Colourful felt

Cork coasters (I recycled my old ones)

Glue

Scissors

Pen & Paper

First, trace the shape and size of your coaster onto the paper.

Roughly sketch out the parts of the floppy disk. 

You will need a label at the bottom, and the metal flap that protects the actual disc on top. I have no clue what is it called, but you know what I mean. That flap thingy.

Cut out your felt pieces according to the pattern you sketched earlier.

Glue all the pieces onto the cork coasters.

Cut some narrow strips to create the lines on the label.

Hurrah! Mission accomplished!

Now to check what files are in these floppy disks...

Good morning ma'am, how may we serve you today?

And it's super easy to make it!

Get:

- A thin wooden chopping block that will roughly accommodate all your thread spools

(You can recycle your old one by disinfecting it first, or use other alternatives like a photo frame with the backing attached, or wooden door plates which can also be found cheap. If you have any other ideas for alternatives let me know!)

- Wooden dowels from the hardware store

- A very strong glue like Liquid Nails or 5-min Epoxy (love that stuff)

- Spray paint

Let's go!

Spray the chopping board, as well as the dowels. Spray thin layers to get an even finish.

Be patient and watch the paint dry. Just kidding, that's really boring, go and watch some NCIS or something heheh.

Alternatively, you may also spray paint it right at the end, up to you ;-)

Mark dots onto the chopping board, 1 inch apart. I had 28 dowels, so I centered 7 x 4 rows of dots.

Stick the dowels down onto the marks! Allow for time to dry according to package <--- another boring-but-you-have-to-do-it-grudgingly-thing.

Once it's dry, you're done! The beauty of this is that it can sit flat on my desk, or be hung up on the wall. Remember to use very strong glue (UHU just doesn't cut it this time, and I actually still very much prefer the 5-min Epoxy), and also at the same time that there are limits to how much weight these dowels can take. Alternatively, you can hammer nails in if you've got excellent hand-eye coordination (I don't. Just sayin...).

What do you think?