The glossy pages of magazines can be used for so much more than fashion advice, recipes, and gardening ideas. Once you are done flipping the pages, turn the brilliantly hued publications into stunning and unique works of art. Here are nine fun and funky ways to reuse magazines.
Picture Frames
Surround wonderful moments from your life with a cavalcade of colors in a frame decorated with magazine paper reeds. Tear out a page, roll it into a tube, and glue it to a background in this easy project from Totally Green Crafts.
Decorative Bowl
Give new life to an old or ugly bowl otherwise headed to the trash heap with cut-up magazine scraps. The bonus? It relieves a lot of stress as you tear the paper into tiny little bits, according to Think Crafts.
Gift Wrap and Bows
Forget spending money on new gift wrap that will get thrown away immediately. Repurpose a magazine page into a small sheet of wrapping paper or a stylish gift bow with help from How About Orange’s tutorial. Then you won’t have to cringe as it gets thrown into the recycling bin.
Party Decor
Jazz up a party with easy-to-make colorful paper balls that you can hang from a chandelier or tree branches, created by TV host Mark Montano.
Paper Flowers
Real flowers can fade in days, but these paper beauties will brighten up your room for years on end. Want a wedding bouquet that will last long after your honeymoon? Consider using these upcycled flowers for your bouquet, as RockNRoll Bride did.
Drink Coasters
Weave strips of magazine pages together in this step-by-step guide via Apartment Therapy to create coasters to protect your furniture. You know, for when you have the friends over to indulge in a great new find of a locally brewed beer, but their table manners are not quite as refined as you’d like.
Paper Furniture
Need some new furniture? Look no further than the recycling bin to outfit your pad, with this innovative upcycling idea by Fine Craft Guild. By rolling together lots and lots of magazines (consider asking friends and relatives for their cast-offs), you can craft stools and mini-seats that are perfect for short-term use. When you move, there is no worry about how to carry heavy furniture down the stairs!
Jewelry
For the perfect rainy-day craft for when kids are asking for something to do, magazine pages can be rolled into beads to create bracelets, necklaces, and other accessories.
Holiday Decorations
Not all Christmas trees are green. Especially when they are made from old magazines. By folding back pages into triangles, old reading material suddenly takes on a festive feeling as it is transformed into perfectly shaped trees. Leave as is for multicolored beauty, or spray-paint in the colors of the season. Consider brown and orange tones to make this upcycled magazine tree craft from Instructables a fall favorite, too.
Feature image courtesy Alberto Cerriteño
Editor’s note: Originally published on October 14, 2014, this article was updated in January 2019.