Party Crafts: Recycled Bunting

I have a love/hate relationship with magazines. I'm like a magpie, attracted to their shiny, colourful offers of beautiful, mostly unaffordable clothes. I like reading the problem pages and checking out new cosmetics or beauty products because pampering oneself is FUN. However, I really, really dislike a few things about them: the pressures of perfection, the concept of paying hundreds of pounds for any item of clothing, and of course, the disposal of these magazines which seems a complete waste.

I go through magazines in the space of an hour (either I'm a speedy reader or the content isn't too thrilling) and to throw away a £2-£4 product makes my purse cry a little. Of course, you can recycle them the traditional way via paper recycling wheelie bins - OR you can turn them into fantastic decorations, like so:

 

Recycled Bunting

What you need is the following:

• old magazines (to make 10 triangles, I used 2 magazines)
• colourful wool
• a hole punch
• glue (pritt-stick works best)
• pretty wrapping paper with a bold design (or you can ignore this and replace with extra bunting triangles)
• scissors
• blank paper (any will do, since you're covering it up)
• cups to hold your colours in (optional but it really helps to keep a tidy area!) 

1. Take your blank paper and draw triangles to the shape you want. My triangles were about 5x5x6 inches, in which you can get about 3 on an A4 piece of paper.
2. Decide which colours you want each triangle to be. If you wish for a letter in the middle, draw that inside of the triangle. 
3. Take your old magazines, and search for the colours you want. For example, if your first triangle is green, you scour your magazine for any areas that are green without text covering it. The more textured and varied, the better but still try and have block colours to make those textures stand out.
4. Cut the areas desired out and try to cut them into strips. Cut these into squares. You don't need to be accurate at all.
5. Glue those squares down, wherever you want! If you can, try and mix as many shades of a colour as you can.
6. If you've decided on adding letters, fill that in too. On the second batch that I made, I found black stands out better than white but if you pick white like I did, outline the letters with a black pen.
7. Cut out and trim neatly. If you have any bold patterned shapes like I did, cut them out, hole punch at the top and add at either side. If you want to add polka dots, hole punch your chosen magazine scraps and empty out your hole punch. It makes it far easier than cutting them manually, trust me!
8. Hole punch a hole into either side of the bunting triangles and join together with your wool. Your bunting is ready to go!

Each triangle took me about 2 hours without rushing or paying too much focus (I found I did 2 without even thinking whilst gawping at Eurovision). I'd highly recommend giving it a go because the end results are brilliant and it requires no skill level at all. Perfect for any occasion!