I have made lots of little zipper bags lately. Nylon teeth zippers work best because they are easy to cut down to the length you need. I got a lot of 100 zippers on eBay in mixed colors and lengths for about $10. Most of them were 12" to 24" long---I was making smaller bags so just cut them down to 7" to 10". You keep the top part with the zipper pull---I don't know of any way to reuse the excess length you cut off as there is no zipper pull nor the metal ends that stop the zipper pull so I have just trashed the ends cut off.