At the end of each project, I always have extra scrap pieces of wood.  I am on the verge of being a hoarder, at least I have been told.  When I have a scrap of wood that I think I will use in a future project, I place the piece of wood in a bucket. After several projects, the number of buckets grows from one or two, to five or six or more.  At this point, the number of buckets is taking over the shop and I need to do something with these scraps.

I have made pen/pencil holders in the past from the smaller square pieces of scrap, but now the buckets are full of long, thin strips of wood of different species.  I glued up several long thin strips of wood into larger strips of wood, and repeated this process until it formed either the size of coasters or cutting boards or trivets.  Since the individual thin strips are different widths, the pieces had to be sanded down to a consistent thickness.   These pieces have red oak, white oak, red wood, maple, pine, douglas fir, walnut, and alder wood.

If you are interested a set of four coasters or trivet/cutting boards for birthday and/or Christmas gifts, please let me know.