Going bradless... (Much like Jennifer Aniston)

I'm sure that our school is not the only one that is tightening it's belt a little. All those fun things we used to be able to order for our class seem like such a luxury now. On this very topic, let me tell you about something fun that I discovered. Now I'm not claiming to have made this up as the first person to ever do it, but I did come to this realization on my own. You can use tiny pieces of pipe cleaner instead of brads! It is much cheaper than brads and it was actually much easier for my students to do this than to use brads. They always have trouble poking them through the paper. Here is a quick photo-torial with brief directions.

Here is a cute word wheel. Cut a pipe cleaner into pieces just under a 1/2 inch long. You can easily get 20 out of 2 pipe cleaners. Poke it through the first paper. Then poke it through the second paper. After that, push the two papers against each other. While holding the pipe cleaner on one side bend the other side flat to the paper, the fold the other side flat. It allows you moving parts to move while holding the paper pieces together. It is not much more intrusive than the parts of a brad. There you have it. I hope it changes your world the way it changed mine.