Saturday, February 18, 2012

What to do with old magazines?

I have to confess: I'm a magazine-junkie. I love magazines! As much as I browse the web for inspiration and ideas, you still can't beat a good ol' paper magazine. So, needless to say, I have a ton of them. After a while, you start running out of places to keep them and it's time to get rid of some.

I have a few ways to get rid of them. There's of course the option to donate them to a charity shop for example, (Please check first that your local shop actually sells them, you don't want to bring them things they can't use) but there's only so many you can donate. I have so many and I often keep them because there's something in it I like. I subscribe to a few, buy some and get some from my mother in law. This all adds up. I keep some intact, mainly my favourites from interior decorating and fashion magazines. Then there's still a ton more...


So, I do a few things. First, I go through the magazine for ideas and pictures I like. I cut them out and add them to my scrapbooks. I have one for fashion, one for decorating and one random one (DIY, beautiful pictures, nice quotes and sometimes short articles that for whatever reason resonated with me). This is a lot of cutting and gluing, but I really enjoy doing that.

After I've picked the things I really like there's still quite a lot of paper left. So, the latest thing I started was to use some of the pages for mail art. I know I've talked about this quite a bit recently, but it's a lot of fun and helps me try out different types of craftiness.

I gave myself a challenge: decorate envelopes from a magazine or a few. This way I go through them and use a lot more of the pages. Not to mention add some extra flair to things I mail out. It's been a lot of fun! I feel like it's a win-win-win situation, use more paper, prettify my outgoing mail and get rid of magazines I've accumulated (recycle of course).



Any other ideas for old magazines? What do you do with them?

2 comments:

  1. I was lamenting the very same problem to a friend who works as an art therapist with troubled teens. She said that magazines are an excellent medium for her patients - they use them to make collages, paper beads, origami and even just painting on top of them. So I kept some of the spreads that I liked (to try the very same projects she mentioned!) and I gave the rest to her. Win-win.

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    1. Thanks for your comment. Sounds like you did find the ultimate win-win situation. I think it's great that there are all these different uses for old magazines. I always feel so bad if I need to get rid of some, when I know there are ways to repurpose them, your ideas being a great example.

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