Giant (reused) drawing paper

May 10, 2010

Years ago, I had a friend that worked in a giant print shop in Chicago. He would generously supply my kiddos, and my brother’s kiddos, and my sister’s kiddos, with piles and piles of endrolls – the too small rolls left at the end of a print job. Too small for print jobs mind you but with hundreds of feet of paper left on the roll. It was delightful to have such pure white paper to play with in such ample and seemingly endless supply. But as we no longer get to Chicago and as the airlines now charge for extra bags anyway, that endroll supply did indeed dry up. For us anyway. Hopefully someone up there is still taking advantage and there are kids all over the windy city doing full size sketches of themselves and all their friends.

On our bike ride to school the other day we happened past an architect’s office who had just put out their recycling bin. Poking out of the top of the 90 gallon bin were ROLLS AND ROLLS of architect’s drawings. Big giant paper attached at the top just like a store bought easel sized sketch pad. Sure they had architect’s drawings on one side, but the other side was clean, clean, clean. And besides, the architect’s drawings always struck me as being rather design rich.

Fortunately I had my super handy Madsen cargo bike so on the way back home I tossed a few rolls in the bin. I hesitate sometimes to take such items home because of my urge to stockpile, but the other side of me just can’t leave stuff like that behind. As I looked into the giant bin with far too many rolls for me to take personally I realized I can’t wait until Austin gets their super duper Mungo Creative Re-use center so my urge to gather and reuse can be met by bringing my materials to them.

These rolls have been super inspiring to my drawing kiddos and while I kept a roll for ourselves I passed on some others to my son’s preschool and a couple of friends. I couldn’t help but think too that these pads would make some fantastic wrapping paper for some cool design store or some funky jewelry shop. If you’re an owner of such I can’t help but think you’d definitely have some street cred with the green crowd if you did.

If there is an architect near you, I’m sure they would be more than happy for you to take some of their old drawings off their hands. Just one more item to be reused before it gets recycled.

Posted in upcycling