Crafts from Recycled Magazines

by Mandi on January 15, 2011

recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts
recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts
recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts recycled magazine crafts

I still love the feel of real magazines, and I’m always looking for ways to reuse them so that I don’t have to feel bad about my guilty pleasure! Most of the time I end up just passing them on to friends or letting the girls use them to create collages, but there are a ton of creative crafts beyond simple collages:

recycled magazine crafts
1. Gift Bows | Whole Living

recycled magazine crafts

2. Magazine Jewelry | Craft Stylish

recycled magazine crafts

3. Paper Doll House | See the Woods and the Trees

recycled magazine crafts

4. Magazine Bowl | A Little Hut

recycled magazine crafts

5. DIY Glass Magnets | Kelly Hicks

recycled magazine crafts

6. Recycled Magazine Coasters | How About Orange

recycled magazine crafts

7. Recycled Magazine Garbage Can | DIY Life

recycled magazine crafts

8. National Geographic Magazine Shelf | Inhabitat

recycled magazine crafts

9. Recycled Magazine Beads | Hennessey House

What do you do with old magazines?


  • Pam

    Love these ideas and they will work wonderful for my Girl Scout troop. Thanks for sharing.
    Pam

    • Martavious1234

      i know

  • santhi

    They are perfect for giftwrapping! Thanks to the yearly Ikea catalogues, we have endless supply of gift wrappers. Nice pictures and ads are great for making puzzles and I have also tried making mini paper boxes (using the envelope origami) and use them as containers. Feels great not to be filling the landfills ;>

  • Anonymous

    My oldest daughter is so into *upcycling* items and selling them at flea and farmer’s markets. She is the crafty one, so I am going to share this link with her!
    Bernice

    Life… your way moderator

    My latest post-Are you too busy to be yourself?

  • amy

    I’d have to say that if you weren’t raised with healthy money habits (I wasn’t but am working on it); acquiring some of that debt might be unavoidable, but it is NOT a good thing.
    I grew up with lots of expensive vacations and trips to Europe that I thought were necessary to be a well-rounded person. Now my father, in his seventies, still works out of necessity. They still have mortgage payments on a house they built in 1963. My (great) uncle was a coal miner and his family never took a vacation, grew much of their own produce, and saved. He buys a new car (cash) every two years and literally has millions in the bank.
    I’m trying to find the middle ground where we can enjoy the occasional fruits of our hard work, but reject the extraneous trapping of our indentured culture.

    • Anonymous

      Wow, what extremes those are! A shame that your dad still has debt on a house built in 1963.
      I was working in the mortgage industry just before the crash. I was just learning the ropes, but was amazed at how many people continually refinanced or increase their line of credit. They were doing this many times to just increase their level of living. To take vacations, or put in a pool, or buy new *toys*. I know that not everyone was in that boat, but its little wonder that so many people lost their homes because they had borrowed 100%+ of what it was worth at the peak.
      Good luck in achieving that middle ground. Yes, we should enjoy the fruits of our hard work, but only if we can pay for it.
      Bernice
      Life… your way moderator
      My latest post-Getting the respect you deserve

  • Anonymous

    Debt has crushed us. Yes, I think all debt is bad. Sometimes it may be unavoidable, but that doesn’t negate the “bad”ness. We did everything stupid we could with money except invest in a time share.

    I do understand mortgages, but I think they should be treated like an unwanted guest that you want to get out of your house as quickly as possible.

    If I were pushed, I would consider taking on a small debt to see a dying family member (but I would ask my church for help from their benevolence fund first). And I would incur whatever medical debt necessary to save my husband or my children. Still doesn’t make debt “good,” more like a necessary evil.

    The problem is that too many people want things NOW rather than waiting until they’ve saved for it. We did and we are paying a dear price for it. We are learning the satisfaction of making do and waiting for God. Still very much a work in progress for us, but we are learning.

    • Anonymous

      Mindy,
      I understand where Mandi is coming from in her post. I think there may be very specific times a short term debt may be necessary. But as you know from first hand experience (and me too) debt and the *want* for stuff can take hold of a person. i would say for the most part, stay away from it.
      Bernice
      Life… your way moderator
      My latest post-Getting the respect you deserve

  • Anonymous

    In reply to Lpf and others about student loans:
    It used to be that student loans were, for the most part, considered *good debt*. The problem now is that the job market is flooded with people with 4 year business degrees who can’t get jobs. They have 10s of thousands of student loans. I remember interviewing people for mortgages who were working a job as a customer service rep making 30K with 50K in student loans. And that was BEFORE the crash of the market.
    I do agree that education is important and obviously, some licensed types of careers will require degrees and student loans. I think people are panicking about not being able to get a job so they are going back to school to some of the *private* schools some online, some with a campus. There is a school in my area that teaches all types of medical technician skills, such as medical assisting, phlebotomy, etc, to the tune of 20K of loans for a year program! In our state, we have a lottery funded program that would allow them to attend a state school and get the same certification for FREE. People aren’t doing their research!
    Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now!
    Bernice
    Life… your way moderator
    My latest post-Getting the respect you deserve

  • http://theshubox.com sarah (the SHU box)

    i think debt with a finite endpoint is okay, as long as there’s a plan in place to keep it a temporary stopgap measure. my husband and i went into modest credit card debt as we were finishing med school, going on interviews, etc – knowing that we would be making a halfway decent paycheck in the near future and could pay it back (and we did – and no debt since, so far!).

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