DIY Up-cycled Magazine Project

If your like me, at any given day your mailbox is inundated with junk mail and magazines galore.  Some you may have subscribed to and others you were unlucky enough to wind up on a mass mailing list. Either way I have always thought that there must be a way to reuse them without merely tossing them in the recycling bin. And that is exactly what today's post is about. Upcycling!

What is upcycling you say? Great question...upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or higher environmental value. This project may not be of higher environmental value or produce a product of better quality, but practical and beneficial for my immediate use, yes.

A few months ago I was looking for a container to hold some of my stove top cooking utensils. I didn't want something standard but instead something rather unconventional looking. That's when the magic happened. I had a bunch of very large size 10 food storage containers hanging around and a nice stack of magazines with no good use. It was an easy solution...combine the two and I've got my utensil container. 

This week I wanted a container for our bathroom to hold all of our products that we use on the daily and that don't ever make it back into a drawer or cabinet. 

A circular container wasn't going to work so I grabbed a cardboard box we had left over from some of Easton's favorite freeze dried fruit (free!) and cut the top flaps off. No need to cut perfectly as the edges will be covered.

Next I glued felt scraps over the edges of the box.

Once I finished covering all of the sides in felt I added a trim, which is completely optional. I feel like it gives it a more finished look.

Now your ready to start tearing out magazine pages, rolling and gluing. Depending on what kind of finished look you want you can tear out all black and white pages or try to tear out only pages with shades of blues...etc. Once you have a large stack of pages start rolling on one end and seal the edge with a line of Elmer's glue.

Once you have a large stack of rolled paper you are ready to start gluing them to your container.

One thing that you want to REMEMBER when gluing is to glue with your excess length hanging off the end of your container. The reason why this is so important is this: When you cut the excess paper roll there will be no way to cut each of them completely straight...

This is the bottom of the box. The edges are ruff and untidy but it doesn't matter because no one will ever see them since they are on the bottom.

This is a shot of the top of the box with the nice smooth even edges. Much better looking than the bottom.
Continue gluing and cutting your magazine rolls until you have covered your entire container. 

And voila! Our new counter storage container...now you try it!