No Limit Hold’em: Make a Playing Card Bag

by Autumn Wiggins February 27, 2008, 9:11 am 18 Comments

Every time I play Monopoly with my husband, he mercilessly beats me, and proceeds to rub it in my face for a solid 12 hours.

Well friends, revenge is mine. His precious Park Avenue will someday soon find itself permanently affixed to the bottom of a mod looking purse. To add insult to injury, I also get to steal his duct tape.

I don’t suggest disassembling your perfectly playable board games for the purpose of craftiness, unless they were already on their way to the dumpster, or you are a sour grape like me. You probably have a few playing decks with missing cards, or obnoxious graphics on the backside. Maybe your kids have a Memory game collecting dust. Surely, they won’t be taking their Pokemon deck to college. With this simple and adaptable tutorial from Craft Bits, you can turn abandoned card games into colorful carry-alls.

Some additional thoughts and ideas about this project:

I think these would make sturdy reusable grocery bags. Try using a brown paper bag as a template, adding a handle at the top.
By omitting the handle and lowering the profile, these would also make cute storage baskets.
If you save interesting packaging of the same sturdiness, have at it as well. Personally, I hang on to tea boxes with neat artwork, which would be perfect.
Duct tape, packaging tape, and other plastic based laminating materials are typically not eco-friendly. I came up empty-handed from my search for green alternatives to complete this project. Compostable tape has been in development for industrial uses for some time, but does not yet appear available to the general public. If you have any suggestions, please be sure to leave a comment. Otherwise, I think it’s safe to say that we all use tape, sometimes daily. Maybe it’s time to ask companies like 3M and Duck why they aren’t offering earth-friendly versions of these household basics.

Written by Autumn Wiggins

This 2008 interview pretty much sums it up:

1. How would you describe yourself?
An oddly situated performer of thought experiments

2. Do you have any anecdotes about your work (how you got started, frustrating moments, or funny stories)?
At this year's Maker Faire in San Mateo, I gave a presentation on how the trend of green crafting can ultimately address the problem of consumption and waste. Dale Dougherty,the publisher of Make and Craft, later had a gift delivered to me, a staple bound book of poetry: Music Like Dirt by Frank Bidart. This is the last thing one would expect to take home from an event so focused on renegade technology. To my surprise, it was an existential reflection on the human need to make things that I now find myself going back to whenever I need some inspiration to look beyond the materials and processes of crafting.

3. What kinds of things do you do for fun?
In my spare time I enjoy amateur astronomy, outdoor adventures, collecting domain names, and hanging out at coffee shops.

4. What interesting projects are you working on right now?
I'm working to organize community involvement in upcycling, and have a few top-secret website projects up my sleeves!

5. Where do you live? Kids, pets, spouse, occupation?
O'Fallon, IL, a suburb (and I mean a totally typical suburb) of St. Louis, MO. Rather than moving to the more culture friendly urban environment, I am staying put and annoying the heck out of Wal-Mart by throwing a massive indie craft show(Strange Folk) in their backyard. I have a husband, Doug, and two sons: a 7 year old mad scientist named Jack, and 6 year old Max, who we think is an aspiring tattoo artist since he's so fond of drawing all over himself with markers. To pay the bills, I do freelance writing, mural painting, and website design, sell my handmade crafts, teach art classes for kids, and work part -time at a local coffee shop.

6. What new idea (in or outside of your field) has excited you most recently?
The concept known as "Cradle-to-Cradle" is a blueprint for sustainability that states everything we manufacture should be either biodegrable, infinitely recyclable, or intended to be upcycled. This is the basis for many of my ideas of how the crafting community can be more widely involved in solving the environmental crisis.

7. What is your favorite food/color/tool?
granola/green/sewing machine!