Whistle Ink ‘Office Supplies’ Blog

I’ve been looking around the Internet for ideas on how you can use office supplies to make craft projects and to my great delight I found quite a few actual crafts made entirely from office supplies.

One of the best samples of novel office supplies art I’ve seen is post-it art which you can see here

Artists around the world have created enormous art pieces using different coloured post-it notes, mosaic style to create dynamic original art.

Some have gone so far as to cover their cars in these brightly coloured post it notes. I doubt these would fair well in the rain!

Meanwhile there are many great crafts that children can make using inexpensive office supplies, i.e.:

Paper-clip jewelry.
Paper clips come in various shapes, sizes and colours and link easily together to make necklaces or bracelets.

Post-it beads
Using post-its again, cut the coloured post-its into thin strips.
Roll the strips around a pencil or knitting needle and glue the free ends to the paper below. When you roll the paper off the pencil you should have what looks like a bead. If you make lots of beads you can make more great jewelry.

You can experiment with different widths of paper for different effects

Scrap-booking with office supplies
Meanwhile office supplies can be used to make any craft and here one woman demonstrates how useful office supplies can be for scrap booking enthusiasts.

Office supplies can be used for card making.

Guillotines are great as many now come with a range of cutting edges.
You can create fancy edges to cards or to card toppers as well as being able to trim your pieces to size for a nice smooth professional looking edge.

Other great card making office supplies include small desk tidies and storage boxes for all those small fiddly bits you don’t want to lose.

Meanwhile printers and printer ink are always necessary for printing off papers and patterns from craft projects you found on the web.

Why don’t you see what great craft project you can make using office supplies.

I was looking for Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson and was diverted for a minute by a video on You Tubes homepage.

The title was: How to Hack the Staples EASY button!

It’s a fantastically hilarious clip about Staples EASY button.

Do you have a Staples EASY button? Let us know what you thinkof the clip!

Parliament

With all this expenses scandal going on I was interested to see how much was spent on office supplies. If some of them went crazy of the trivial items I imagine be able to order multipacks of top branded gel pens to be the order of the day!

I’m sure a quick scan of Whistle Ink and they could have reduced his office supplies overall! Here is the list of office supplies products they took the time to declare:

The claims:

Douglas Alexander claimed claimed 43p for a box of rubber bands and £7.83 for a box of disposable latex gloves

Sarah McCarthy Fry claimed 17p for two paperclips and £3.56 on gold and silver sticky stars

Andrew George charged £4.99 for a telescopic flick duster and £31.50 for a winter candle

Ed Balls, the Education Secretary and leading Brownite, claimed £9.99 to buy The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid His Majority

Martin Horwood, Lib Dem MP for Cheltenham, sent his PA away for a couple of days and spent £693.25 on the course “How to Be A Proactive PA”

Hugo Swire, Tory MP for East Devon, claimed £24.50 for an orchid plant for his office in 2005

David Cameron, the Tory leader, claimed £10 at the Parliamentary Bookshop for a copy of The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches

I’m sure these MPs would be any office stationery companies dream customer!

Source

The governments plan is to require supermarket to sell more products loose and look at offering refilling options.
We used to take our soda bottles back to the corner shop and until a few years back when our milk came in bottles and got delivered to our door – we put the empty ones out.
How would you feel going into an office supplies store and then say grabbing a handful of paperclips, or picking up a loose pad of post it notes or cartridges without the cardboard packaging?
There would need to be set containers that you could pay for one and then you could bring that in and fill it up and get charged a standard price – kind of like the salad section where three sizes of containers at different prices.
What other office supplies do you think would work?

To read more about the new propsals from DEFRA click here

We should really be calling them repositional notes but Post-it notes are what people call them because they are so popular and it seems preferred.

We asked SMEs what they thought about repositional notes and if they preferred the leading Post-it Notes brand of if they used alternatives which are cheaper. We also asked them for the reasons for their choice.

The main reason for small businesses sticking to original Post-it Notes is because of their stickiness.

Nicola Kelsall  |  Spiralling Meditation and Sound Therapy says:

I’ve used both, but prefer the originals. I find that the adhesive on cheaper alternatives loses its ability to be posted anywhere once you’ve taken it off the pad, and then you end up with a little pile of dried up post-its, like autumn leaves but less crunchy! My favourite post-it notes product is the 3M Post-It Notes Yellow 3×5 655YE. I’ve used lots of different shaped ones in various courses – heart, oval, and some patterned ones.  I still prefer the traditional yellow – they are easier to read and to write on.

The price difference between branded and budget brands like 5 Star which we stock can be HUGE. Almost half the price. And these value bramds do have their supporters:

I use alternative brands of repositonal notes because they are cheaper and just as good. My favourite pads are the smaller ones like Post It Note 11/2x 2 Flrl Rbw 653FL pk12 . I have used the shaped post-it notes, heart ones of course lol!

Suzi Beaman  |  Fuzzydon (Cartoon cards, gifts & caricatures)

 Take a look at some more comments on our post-it notes page and see the price difference also.

An interesting thought is how many times we remove and restick a post-it note. In our case here at Whistle Ink - it’s usually just once or twice.

If you run or work for a business we would love to hear your opinion on repositional notes! Which ones ones do you prefer and why? You can tell by using the contact form on the post-it notes page.

When it comes to office supplies companies serving B2B they don’t get much bigger than Lyreco and Corporate Express.

Now Corporate Express plans to buy Lyreco for mega bucks. Staples wanted Corporate Express but they felt they were undervalued.

What dies this mean for office supplies customer? No idea really. The already must have big purchasing power themselves.

It might be worth taking a look at our comparison of certain products and see how much cheaper we are than most. There is no risk involved in buying from Whistle Ink - your businesses will get the same level of high service and reliability throughout - just as you would expect!

We also offer the same terms - FREE 30 day payments terms, online ordering for convenience and email support that carries on outside normal working hours!

Whistle Ink is the new name in office supplies!, office stationery, business

Whistle Ink is going to be producing a special offers brochure listing great offers that your office might actually benefit and save money from.

The super saver which is printed on 100% recycled paper is planned to produced and distributed quarterly. Once you get your brochure on your desk, there is no need to rush and order as you have 3 months - plenty of time for when it comes to your next order round.

Having a quick sneak peak (well I am the boss) I can see offers on copier paper, laser and Avery labels, even desk fans (we hope it’s a very hot summer whether or not you cool down with Whistle Ink fans). We do also have the regular offers on envelopes, tape and pens!

There’s 660 product in this brochure. 660! There’s bound to be something for your office that you can order from.

Most of our existing business customers should be receiving one.

How do you order a copy?

Not everyone is going to get one! If you would like to request one click here

Everyone loves a bargain. We hunt them out outside of work, change shops to save a few pence or pounds. You can do it at work now and we’ve made it even more easier by plonking an exclusive brochure right on your desk!

We have heard from our supplier that they are increasing the price of paper. Mills are working to full capacity to produce the office laser copier paper we print on. Here are just a few ideas on how cut down on printing and copying.

1) Can you switch your fax number to receive all faxes via email as an attachment? Service like these exist already, and we at Whistle Ink already are using this. We have a land-line number that we can fax with also, but a separate fax local fax number that, when a fax is sent to it, the fax data is converted to a Picture file attachment! Thankfully we don’t get adverts through offering personalised overalls or cheap business car rental!

2) Printing double sided can save alot of paper, and does not really detract from a professional looking document. Most printers and copier today offer duplex as standard, or you can do it manually. Take advantage of this.

For meetings and presentations, giving hand outs, can mean that while essential, this information becomes redundant after the meeting. Printing double sided paper will reduce the amount that needs to be recycled.

3) Do you need to print at all?

Can the information displayed or distributed or stored in another format? PDF attachment, power point presentation, CD / DVD?

Do you have any good habits to share? What are your thoughts on how to cut down paper use? Let us know!

You have probably seen these ridiculous savings on ink and stationery or office supplies websites. They say the RRP for a packet of Post-it Notes is say £15.00 but you can have it for £10.00. Can you really believe that?

I believe that the RRP are put there, sky high, in order to make the real selling price look better and more of a bargain even though it may actually be not!

Don’t be fooled!

When our new site is launched selling the full range of office supplies you may see these RRP. Just look at out real selling price and you will find that from pens to paper and post-it notes, you will be able to buy at a very reasonable price!