The trials and tribulations of recycling

I am so good at making a drama out of an everyday occurrance and today was no different -  I deserve a posh frock and an Oscar I'm sure.
My good friend Anne aka Legs is always creating marvellous things from bits of paper and string, amongst other things, and when she posted a challenge on Papercraft Planet to recycle a newspaper or magazine into something that wasn't a card, I knew I wanted to join in but hadn't a clue what to make!
I set about the task of creating something this morning still with no idea what I would end up with - surely that's what creating is about?  Extreme Carfting......
Here's what I started with:

Some interesting looking pictures from a coffee magazine (I didn't even know you could get magazines about coffee until one come through the letterbox a few weeks ago), some double sided sticky tape and a pencil.
At this stage I had a vague plan which involved rolling the pages around the pencil to make long thin tubes. That's about as far as I got.

All very pretty, huh? Must also point out that when making the first tube, I didn't take out my pencil before I finished rolling. Could I get the darn thing out? Nope. Had to unroll it all again, retrieve said pencil and start again. After a had a bundle of tubes I sat and looked at them for a while. Then a bit longer. Finally I went and rummaged in the rubbish bin.

I'd finished off a roll of sticky tape a couple of days ago and decided this could be used too. After a few head scratching moments, and a bit of faffing with a stapler, here's the finished result:

To cut a long story short, I covered the empty tape roll to make a base, which I then stuck the flattened and halved tubes to. One of the long tubes I used to neaten the base and another I put along the top of the pot on the inside, then folded and stapled the tubes over the top. I rather like the shabbiness of the staples being visible, but I guess I could cover it with ribbon or more paper if I felt so inclined.
A surprisingly sturdy pen holder, made from a few pages of a magazine and an empty tape roll. Bargain!