Magazine Beads

I cannot take full credit for these wonderful little beads. I found a how-to on instructables.com and just ran with it. 

There is definitely a learning curve, but once I got the hang of it I couldn't stop. This is one of those projects that I can spend a whole day on and not even realize it. 

It is also great for my love of using even the smallest scraps. I use magazine pages to make coasters, but there are often small scraps of paper left over that would otherwise just be recycled. With these beads however I can now use those scraps to make a few beads from. I know I am crazy, but the variety that I get from using these scraps keeps me interested in the beads even longer.

I just love watching the beads form and the patterns that different pages will make. Color like this is so intriguing to me.

Magazine Coasters

I have been making these coasters for a couple years now. I made a couple for myself. My mom saw these and wanted some for her house. Ryan's mom came to visit and fell in love, I sent her some for mother's day. 

These are really quite easy to make and I love watching the patterns develop. Ryan does not like the abundance of magazines now in our home, but I have them nicely contained in my “studio”. Actually I think the abundance of magazines is why I got my own studio in the first place =)

The earth-friendlyness of these is also a big plus. All the pages I use for these are pages that dont end up in the trash.

Plus they are just fun!