What Can You Do With a Magazine

so I wanted to see what I could make from a single magazine. This is the result of that experiment.

The tools used include: scissors, glue, a paper trimmer, a dental pick (to poke holes), hot glue gun.

Extra materials used include: cardboard, gold acrylic paint, a single led candle, cardstock black and white in color, jump rings and ear wires.

So the first thing I made was some bracelets. I took a piece of cardstock and cut it into strip's 1/2 inch wide by 11 inches long. I then wrapped these strips around a can and glued them until I had a thick circle of paper. Then I took 1 inch wide strip's of magazine paper and wrapped this circle to make my bracelet. I used a glue stick for the cardstock and Elmer's school for for the magazine paper. The only other tools I needed were a paper trimmer and a pop can.

to make these I first made a paper straw by cutting a trip of paper 1 inch wide from my magazine then using a skewer I rolled my paper into a straw. You add glue to one side of your strip before rolling. Then I cut this straw to 1 1/2 inch long pieces and oiled a hole in the top. I added a jump ring then attached it to ear wires.

for this I rolled an entire page of my magazine into a roll. Then I cut this into 3 inch long segments. I took a 3 inch square piece of cardstock and glued my pieces onto it after flattening them. I then coated these in some polyurethane to seal and water proof them. The result is some useful coasters.

I found that my coasters needed a companion to make my coffee table set up complete. So I took my magazine pages and rolled the entire page into a roll and then cut these pieces in half. I then took and drew a circle using a ribbon package on a scrap of cardboard. I cut this circle out and painted it gold. Then used a hot glue gun to glue my rolled magazine pieces to this circle so they were standing upright. I did paint them with a one layer of gold acrylic before glueing then down. Painting them is optional. I wanted them to have a gold tint but still show the magazine image through the paint. Then I put an LED candle in the center. Viola a unique one of a kind l little lamp. You could of course make this lamp larger by starting with a larger circle, and then putting led strip lights inside of it. I made a small candle sized lamp because my coffee table is actually a stool that I bought at family dollar and doesn't have a large surface area to it. All in all this project took about an hour to do (paint drying time was the long part). The cost was 1 dollar for the LED candle light. The cardboard and paper used were all destined for the trash.

take a page. Fold it in half. Then in half again so you get an m shape. Then cut this as seen in the photo cutting the top of your m shape. Then roll it up. Then apply glue to secure. To make mine more sturdy I added hot glue to the bottom. This is now perfect to top the lamp I made previously.

there are many other things I could have made as I only used about 1/2 of the magazine. But for the purpose of this tutorial I stuck with these items. Please comment if you're interested in more ideas for magazine paper as I have several others I can think of, like silhouettes wall art and even a wreath from the paper straws. Or comment if you think you'll try making any of these. As to where the ideas came from, mostly these ideas came from Pinterest images as well as a lot of experimentation. It's going to take me a week to clean up all the scraps of paper from playing around.