Guest Post: Magazines

Today's offering for all of you is a guest post by my childhood best friend and scrimpy pal, Emma, who writes a great little blog called Simple Pleasures. Be sure to visit her and give her some love once you're done reading about this fun project she did!




I am a fairly eco-conscious person and though at times it would be easier to throw stuff out.... I tend to try to recycle what I can and reuse what I can't.

Our apartment building (though they really should) doesn't have recycling!  So I've had to find creative ways to reuse a lot of things.  Most recently I've been trying to figure out how to reuse the foot high stack of magazines and try to make Christmas presents too!

I looked online all over for crafty ideas and found How About Orange a wonderful blog full of crafty things, stuff to do when you're bored, and printables.  The creator of How About Orange is Jessica Jones, a textile artist and super crafter who has thought of everything.  She's not specifically a "green" crafter, but has some awesome ideas of how to reuse items!

On her site I found this:

You guessed it - this is a woven coaster from old magazines!!!! Amazing!

This is my own version - but if you want to see another version check out the How About Orange version 

Follow the steps on How About Orange or my own below:

1) Start with scissors, tape, and/or a stapler

2) Tear out 6 pages from magazine of
corresponding colors - here we have green/brown

3) Cut off the ragged edge of each page
(just to make things nice and even)

4) Cut page in half.

5) Fold in half long ways once...

6) and then in thirds...

7) So it looks roughly like this.

8) Fold your newly folded page in half
with the exposed edges towards the center.

9) And start weaving

10) If you choose to, you can tape the
edges down to avoid movement of
the pages as you weave.

This gets easier as you do it more... so keep at it!!! My next endeavor? Magazine Baskets! Exciting!!!!