Pretty Things Thursday: Magazine Page Crafted Items

Back in late 2009, our household was faced with two issues: 1) Nick had no where to put his new wedding ring when he wasn't wearing it, and 2) Nick had no place to put his wallet and keys, aka his effects, when he came home from work.  I used Christmas and the 2009 City Paper Primer as a way to solve both of these issues.

I decided to decorate a box with magazine reeds to hold Nick's effects.  I picked up a simple wooden box from Michael's, and, using this tutorial, I made a bunch of reeds from magazine pages, hot glued them to the top of the box, trimmed them down, and then Mod Podged the reeds to harden them and set them in place.  It was pretty easy, it just took awhile.  Both items were made using the pages of the City Paper Primer.  I chose mostly white pages for the box so it would look uniform and so you could tell that it was made from magazine pages.  See that yellow double dot shape to the right?  That is part of one of my favorite things ever, the SEPTA map.

The ring box was pretty easy too.  I can't find the original tutorial I used, but it was something like this.  I remember having to ad lib when I was creating the lid, but I figured as long as it was slightly wider than the base, all would go well.  The only issue that I ran into is that over time, some of the paper gets snagged when you put the lid on. 

For the ring box, I chose pages that were either full color or had large illustrations on them.  On the side of the lid, you can see a couple of skyscrapers and Ben Franklin Parkway, which leads up to one of our favorite places, the Philadelphia Art Museum.

These gifts went over very well with Nick and he was glad to finally have a special place to put his things.  They were not only easy and cheap to make, but they're pretty fun to look at too!