Kind of a half-baked idea, but still…

I’ve been fascinated with those recycled magazine bowls for a while now. And I saw a little Japanese craft book recently (No ISBN, sorry) that even had magazine pages woven into baskets. What a great resource — old magazine pages!

Then, Patricia put up this excellent tutorial for making the bowls. Looking at that, I started thinking: What about recycled magazine jewelry?

I spent a whole day noodling around with this idea over the weekend. I didn’t come up with any designs I particularly loved, but I thought I’d present the concept here so you can play with it, too. I think it has lots of potential.

So, beginning with Patricia’s tutorial, I followed her instructions, but I started with only half a magazine page (cut on the vertical), so the resulting folded strip would be narrower.

It’s interesting – color becomes much more important in these little pieces. I think they make cool pendants or earring elements, but only if the color presence is strong. And I was surprised by how a beautifully colorful magazine page could fold up to look so muddy and indistinct.

In fact, I found that the advertising pages worked best — and the brighter and more garish the ads were, the better paper beads they made.

I was also playing around with other shapes besides coils. I did these by taking a folded strip, and then fan-folding it back and forth. You could use the same idea to make all kinds of other shapes, too – you could create square or triangular coils. You could wrap the paper strip around another object, like a Scrabble tile. Or you could fold the strip every which way, glue it together, and create something very free-form. You could also make your coil into a dome shape – like a tiny little magazine-bowl cabochon.

A good, thick coat of Mod Podge gave these a nice seal, or you could use a spray-on sealer. I’m still playing with ways to attach findings.

I did find this craft to be a little hard on the hands, as the magazine coils are a bit rough to the touch, and you’re in proximity to hot glue throughout. But it’s fascinating. My samples have all gone into a ziploc bag to await further development, a la Futuregirl Alice.

While we’re on the subject, take a look at this necklace – a nice combo of paper beads and wire.

Tagged as: jewelry, paper, recycled, tutorial