Use of Contact Paper for Mounting Handouts and Specimens

Cut contact paper larger than the trimmed handout.

Position the handout with contact paper over page

Handout sheets should be permanently mounted in your notebook using contact paper. This forms a protective, transparent cover, and ensures that you will not lose them. You may also permanently mount flat specimens in the same way.

Materials:

Use clear, transparent contact paper which has a smooth surface (no embossed pattern). Otherwise, the specimen will be obscured. The most suitable brand was “Adhere”, but appears to be no longer available. “Con-Tact” Clear and “Kwik Kover II” are readily available and are suitable. You may wish to try a different brand. Use these criteria for evaluation: clarity of detail of mounted specimen, ability to reposition an incorrectly placed specimen, ability of the contact paper to be written upon with ink (especially your TOMBO Pen, or india ink), cost, tendency of adhesive to creep out beyond edge of the contact paper, resistance to yellowing.

Protocol:

Date and title the page in your notebook (date = day protocol is mounted). Add any written notes relating to the handout first since writing on contact paper is difficult. Cut away all excess paper on printed handout.

You may trim the excess paper as close as possible without removing any of the printing.

Placed trimmed handout on top of unrolled contact paper , cut contact paper so that at least 1/2 inch margin projects beyond the specimen. The final dimensions should be smaller than the size of the notebook page. (Some prefer to cut rolls of contact paper in half which then approximates the desired page height.)

Strip off the backing from the contact paper without creasing the contact paper . (Start it by slightly tearing backing paper.) Lie it on the table sticky side up.

CRITICAL STEP: Hold trimmed specimen above contact paper so that the printed side is down, and margins are even. Bow the sheet and lower center down onto adhesive. Roll down specimen evenly onto contact paper, avoiding bubbles, creases, wrinkles, etc. Press out from the middle out to adhere to adhesive . Do not attempt to pull printed material off contact paper, the ink will stick to the adhesive (what a mess).

Trim any excess margin from around the specimen, but try to preserve the 1/2 inch margin.

Position contact-papered specimen into place in notebook , as close as possible to the bottom of the page, leaving space at the top for title, date & cross references. Make sure the sticky edges do not project beyond the edge of the page. Press from the middle out to adhere edges.

For handouts which have lines for cross referencing to the page in your notebook where the items is to be found, leave the lines uncovered with contact paper so that you can enter the page numbers as the items are entered into your notebook.

Here is the inside front cover with a Lab Schedule and the facing page with a Handout Table of Contents.

Here is a view of the guidelines drawn on the edges of the closed book. The TITLE goes between lines 1 and 3, the cross reference goes on line 6, and the body of the entry goes below line 9.