Recycled Costco Cereal Box and Magazine Paper

Before

After

I love re-using packaging and turning them into free, usable containers. I also started collecting magazines for their vibrant color spreads. So when I was trying to figure out what to do with this cereal box from Costco, I took out my pile of blue magazine paper to match the theme in this room.

How to make recycled paper placemats

For some reason, I still get issues of W magazine from redeeming airline miles a couple years ago. While I should tell them to not send me anymore, I do enjoy their art and thought I would take advantage of the vivid colors of their 10″ x 13″ spreads.

Along the lines of basic, uniform weaving patterns (as illustrated by this WikiHow article), the fun challenge of this is finding the right mix of colors and deciding where to show or hide certain segments of the strip of paper. You might be able to tell where I tried to hide any distinguishing features of the models to create a more uniform texture.

After arranging the strips of paper in the pattern I wanted, I used glue sticks to hold the pieces together and then took book cover laminating paper to seal it. I tried to get the air bubbles out, but it doesn’t work well with so many pieces that weren’t totally flattened. In hindsight, I would recommend trying a hard laminate instead. The pictures above illustrate the pieces before laminating.