Magazine Coasters

There are so many ways to upcycle your magazines.  We actually don't get many magazines in our house, but we were at the library and they had stacks of them for sale at 10 cents each.  I really enjoyed getting them and exploring them with my children while were were doing the magazine creative challenge.

Since we had so many magazines in our house there was no way we could do just one art project with stacks and stacks of papers.  So we tried our hand at magazine coasters.

Magazine Coasters

This activity was very difficult for me and my seven year old to do.  It takes patience and perfection.  Not something that is a good mix for children or sloppy adults.  With this project you simply chose several pictures in a magazine you like.  Even using just pages of words would look really retro and cool.  Ally wanted earth tones so we went with any picture that had lots of blues and greens.  I think If we were to do it again I would mix it up with some plain text or a third more opposing color.  

 

We made our coasters by weaving 1 inch strips of magazine paper together.  

 

We folded our papers over which is what made this activity more difficult to do.  You have to be certain you are weaving the top layer and the bottom layer correctly at the same time.  It got confusing at times and often the project would just fall apart if your hands weren't holding it together tightly.  We found after trial an error that using glue as we went helped tremendously.  

Ally was a good sport.  She threw in the bucket a few times so to speak.  It really was difficult ( how much can I say that?)  Of the four that we did.  Ally completed one in the time it took me to do the other three and I also experimented with other ways we could have done the activity.  I found this was probably the simplest for her. 

 

We found the coasters were a bit too thin.  Ally had the idea of adding cardboard to the bottom.  We  used modge podge to create a finished look on both the top and bottom of the project. 

 

Four coasters ready for a Christmas ribbon!

What have you done with magazines lately.  This blog hop started by tinkerlab is a great place to share your ideas: