Creative Uses for Phone Books

More than half a billion phone books are produced each year in the United States alone, and less than 10 percent are recycled. You can help prevent this waste by taking yourself off the distribution list for phone books, finding a phone book recycling center or reusing your old phone books in creative ways.

Flip Books

Large phone books are the perfect medium for flip books, since they contain hundreds of pages and come already bound. You'll have to make your drawings small, since there's not a lot of white space available, but you can have fun with the form by drawing pictures that seem to move around the border of the pages. If you're feeling ambitious, create a few very long flip books, or else try a number of short ones. If you don't have experience with drawing flip books, practice with tracing paper so you can see through the page to the previous drawing and know exactly where to place the next one.

Crafters can use old phone books as work surfaces, if the craft project is small enough to allow for it. Once you've finished your project, just tear out the messy pages. It's easier to store than newspaper, since it's all in a single book that you can stick on a shelf or under your craft table, and you'll definitely save on cleanup. Break the spine first to help the book lie flat, creating a friendlier work surface.

Phone books are a virtually unlimited source of paper for origami and other folded paper crafts. To make squares from rectangular phone pages, all you have to do is fold the page on a diagonal, then cut off the excess bit of paper at the bottom and unfold. You can use phone book paper as practice paper for trying out new and difficult designs, or incorporate the phone book medium into the finished art to showcase the importance of reusing and recycling.

Phone books make crafty recycled pencil holders. To make one, cut off the top three to four inches of a phone book, divide the pages into five sections, roll the sections into circles to form a five-petaled flower shape and attach a cardboard bottom. You could leave the holder as it is to show off its re-purposed nature, but if you paint it no one will be able to detect its humble origins.