Magazine Holder Craft

My friend Anna Dawn is one of the most amazing crafters I have ever met. She is just one of those people who can look at something and just know how to do it. Or will see something that is being wasted and think, "how can I use that"? Seriously, she has a gift.

Well, I am tired of scratching my head and thinking how the crap does she do it?! I sat down today and challenged myself to try and find a use for an empty box we have had sitting upstairs in our family room for 2 weeks now, besides its obvious use of collecting cobwebs. And what I came up with was a simple magazine organizer. All you need is...

scrapbooking paper

cardboard

hot glue gun

paint

sandpaper

First you need to cut out the shapes. The easiest way is to trace a magazine holder that you already own onto the cardboard, but if you don't happen to have one to trace (which would explain why you are making one) then you will need to cut out 5 pieces. The front piece will be 7.5in x 4in. The two side pieces will be 9.5in x 12in. The back spine piece will be 7.5in x 12in. And the bottom piece will be 9.5in x 7.5in.

Now that you have all 5 pieces cut out, take the two side pieces and get ready to trim them. Place the side pieces down and on the left 12in side mark about 4in up from the bottom and on the 9.5in top about 2.5in from the end of the right side. You will now connect those two marks with a diagonal line. You can now cut them out to have them look almost like a right triangle. This is a great time to use your 5 cardboard pieces to help you trace and cut out your scrapbook pieces.

With all your pieces cut out you can now start sanding all the cardboard edges to help give them a softer and rounded look. When they are to your satisfaction you can now start hot gluing the pieces together with your glue gun. Try really hard to not use too much. Using an old pencil to help clean up extra glue spilling from the sides really helps. When it is glued together you can paint the inside and the open edges.

Your structure should be built now and it is time to attach the scapbooking paper. Make sure that your paper and cardboard match up really well and you have glued the edges down smoothly. Again, try not to use too much glue, but smooth it out if you can. When all is glued and attached feel free to run sandpaper on some of the edges again if you are needing to sand off some hardened glue or scrapbooking corners.

You can use any cardboard box to make these. The first one I did, I used a hardy cardboard box, but my second one I used a Costco cereal box and even that lighter cardboard did great. The tutorial used for this magazine holder is a fairly large one. You can easily shrink it down to a slimmer or smaller size. I made a CD holder for my husband's desk with an old cereal box and it turned out great.

These were really easy to make and I pump out two this afternoon pretty fast. Not only is it a easy craft, but it is a great way to spruce up an office and to also recycle some materials. Cereal boxes are great for some slimmer ones.