Laminate It!

These past few days I have been spending a lot of time getting organized around the house. While going through my cookbooks, I found a serious of scraps of paper and print outs containing some of my favorite recipes. Of course, they are all food stained (as they have been heavily used over the years) and in some cases only readable by me. I decided to transfer them all to recipe cards that could all be organized in this cute little box.


Of course that doesn't solve the food stain problem that is bound to occur the next time I make these things, so I decided to laminate them. We just got in a great new thermal laminating machine from 3M. It laminates items up to 9" wide and it's very light weight, easy to operate anad economical.


To start my recipe card project, I trimmed the edges of the card ever so slightly so that, once laminated, it would still fit into the box.


I used these 4x6 laminating pouches


And placed the card in the pouch like so making sure it was centered in the pouch to ensure that all sides would seal properly.



Just turn the machine on and once the green "ready" light lights up, you're good to go.


Adjust the guides as needed and just slide your piece through the machine sealed side first.



It only takes a few seconds to feed through and you end up with a perfectly laminated finished piece!


I just trimmed the edges and now it is a perfect fit in my recipe box! Only 30 or so more to go!



Here's another fun and practical project for the laminating machine...
I decided to plant some herbs and found that the seed packs I purchased had all of this great information about care for the plants and also some great artwork.



Usually when I plant the seeds, the packages they came in tend to go missing almost immediately. To preserve that great information I cropped down the packages and laminated the pieces so I could put stick them in the soil and have an ongoing identifier for each pot.


I am loving this new machine! What other fun uses can you think of? - Amanda