Folded magazine paper crafts are a great way to reuse and recycle old magazines when you have finished with them.
Magazine Paper in Origami
Magazine paper is a frugal alternative to to store-bought paper for your origami projects.
Magazine Pages
The design and layout of the magazine page you use will have an effect on the final look of the origami project. Written words are excellent for figures that have a circular shape or spiral to them. The effect often ends up looking like a fountain of letters.
Look for advertisements that have bright colors and graphics. These will look sharp when used in pretty origami flower figures, as origami stars or even as part of origami photo frames. Photographs of people or animals do not always end up looking the best when used in folded paper crafts. This is because an eyeball, arm or leg may end up in an odd area once the project is complete. If you want to use magazine pages with photographs, captions or a combination of photos and wording, consider crafts like origami cubes or origami boxes that will not look busy or cluttered with a lot of background noise on the magazine page.
Keep in mind that every magazine has a different quality of printed page. Some magazines have ink that might come off as you fold, while others are printed on heavier weight paper. Use paper that suits the project you have in mind, even if this means you must practice folding with several different magazines to find the pages that work best.
Magazine Page Size
Few magazines, if any, are printed on square pages. Most magazines are rectangles. Try to find instructions for origami with a rectangle shaped paper in order to make your folded magazine projects easy. Otherwise, follow these steps for turning a rectangular paper into a square:
- Lay the paper horizontally in front of you.
- Take the upper left corner and pull it down so that the left vertical edge aligns with the longer bottom edge.
- Cut off the excess paper not included in the folded area on the right.
- Unfold the paper to find a perfect square.
Create Folded Magazine Paper Crafts
It is possible to use magazine paper to make virtually any origami thing you want. Keep in mind that having many unfolded creases in your magazine paper might make the paper weak or cause some of the printed ink to wear off.
Try making these folded magazine paper crafts the next time you have some old magazines lying around:
- Magazine Paper Flowers at WonderHowTo: Kids will love making these simple magazine flowers, which utilize the accordion fold in their design.
- Folded Paper Butterfly at Bluebonnet Village Craft Network: Get into the spirit of spring by making a butterfly from magazine pages. Brightly colored advertisement pages look great in this project.
- Origami Box at Origami Instructions: Expert folders will enjoy the challenge of trying to diagram and recreate the box in the photographs using magazine pages.
- Spiral Ornament at Instructables: Follow along with the photographs to make a quick ornament out of magazine paper, thread and needle. A few cuts with scissors are also necessary to complete this easy magazine craft.
Craft projects with magazine pages often include small cuts, which makes them a form of origami called Kirigami. Kirigami and origami projects with magazines are a great way to fill rainy summer days or blustery winter nights for kids and adults.
Folded magazine paper crafts allow you to use up your old magazines by putting them to good use. If nothing else, you can use magazine papers to learn origami figures that may take several tries before you get them right. This keeps you from wasting expensive paper that you have bought.
