We used:
- a square-ish of cardboard per kid - I cut them for the younger kids, but I could have let them do it
- a larger square-ish of scrap fabric - we put the cardboard square on it and cut the fabric about two inches larger on all sides
- Spray adhesive - I did all the spraying
We used an old display board that had water damage on one end. For my own mouse pad I actually used two equal pieces of cardboard. I used the spray adhesive to glue them together before moving on to the next step.
We cut the fabric about two inches larger - emphasis on the "about."
We took the whole production outside and I sprayed one side of the cardboard with spray adhesive. Be sure to spray on newspaper or some other surface than can be sticky forever - 'cause it will. One note - if you end up with very sticky hands (am I the only one who gets more sticky than my project with spray adhesive?), you can rub your sticky skin with cooking oil before washing with dish soap to get the sticky off. We use this method for tree sap, too.
We laid the fabric on wrong side down and pressed and smoothed it with our hands. The kids' pads had some wrinkles, but I was able to pull up the fabric and smooth them out.
What we should have done (and didn't know until we tried them out) was to glue some grippy shelf liner stuff to the bottom.
(This is from the dollar store. This piece actually belongs in a drawer, so I'll add some to my mouse pad when I get to the dollar store again.)
Even without the grippy stuff, it works well, and mine matches the mug rug I made a few months ago.
Kristi loves hers, too!
It was a fun, cheap, easy kid project. Now I don't have to spend $$ on mouse pads for 6 kids!
