Sunday, April 22, 2018

Make an Upcycle Magazine Paper Basket for Earth Day

This is a re-post of a tutorial I did a couple of years ago on how to make a basket using magazine paper for Earth Day that's celebrated on April 22nd! I love recycling items from around the house to make craft items all year long! This basket is one of my favorite pieces and I love how it is still in great shape and still pretty to look at!

There are so many crafts that you can make to celebrate Earth Day. It's a great time to look around your home and see what you've collected to repurpose into something new.

I keep a decorative container filled with magazines in my bedroom. I love looking at them over and over to get inspiration and sometimes use in recycle/upcycle projects. I remember seeing a basket made of coiled magazine strips shaped into open squares that looked so different and unique. I filed that image away intending one day to create something like it.

It has taken awhile to finally put the basket together. I actually started it last year, got discouraged, and put it away. A craft group that I belong to decided to do a blog hop on earth day crafts and I knew the magazine basket would be perfect for the event.

You really don't need a lot of supplies to make this adorable basket :

Magazine pages

Small square container

White glue

Wood skewer

Scissors

Hot glue gun

Mod podge

Cardboard

Begin by making the magazine tubes that will be shaped into squares. Since this is an Earth Day project, I cut out only green & blue pattern magazine pages - green for grass, blue for sky. Cute, eh! Fold the page in half lengthwise, and then fold in half again. Cut along the folds into four even strips.

Take a skewer stick and place it on the corner edge of the magazine at an angle.

Then take the end tip of the page over the skewer and start rolling the paper on the stick until you get near the end. You might have to lift the paper up to tighten the roll by twirling the stick. It takes a bit of practice to make tight tubes.

Add white glue to the triangular edge and roll to the end. Flatten the finished tube.

You will need to make lots and lots of tubes for this basket.

Next, take a small square container (I used an empty salt shaker) and wrap a tube around it a few times. Connect additional tubes, if needed, by adding a little white glue on end and inserting into opening of wrapped tube.

Seal end with hot glue.

You will need 54 magazine paper squares to assemble this basket.

To assemble, connect the squares in groups of three for each side. Apply hot glue along the connecting edges and press together. Then cut smaller strips of rods and wrap around the connecting sides and hot glue in place.

For the shorter two sides, three rows of three squares were glued together and wrapped.

For the longer sides, and bottom, four rows of three squares were glued together, wrapped.

All corners were connected in the same manner to form the basket.

Next, cardboard was measured and cut-out slightly smaller than the bottom of the basket, mod podge on both sides with magazine paper, and inserted inside the basket to prevent contents from falling out.

And finally, five magazine tubes were woven together to make the handle. You can see a full tutorial on how to weave here. The ends of the handle were wrapped around the center square, hot glued together and secured with a piece of magazine tube and hot glue.