Recycle magazines to make an interesting, colorful necklace. Great for presents, or for an activity. If you have patient kids, they can do it too!

Materials:
Magazines
Glue (Glue stick will make it cleaner and easier)
Thread (I used some from an emergency seeing kit)
"Spacer Beads" (To keep with recycling theme use an old bracelet or something)
Time! (Getting the hang of rolling paper into a bead is quite a learning curve

Step 1: Choose Your Magazines

Whatever magazines you have lying around will work, Try to overlook the ones with too much news print writing; you're going for colorful and whimsical, not black and white. I like to use fashion magazines because that's what I have, and the adds provide a lot of interesting color.

If you want to be organized about it, split up the chosen pages by color. I did this, then decided to use one color family/

Step 2: Cut Magazine Pages

To make the strips needed to construct the beads, make long ,thin triangles, approximately 3cm at the widest. They can very slightly; first because it gives the bead more interest, and second because otherwise you will be stressing out about making them all identical. Lets be honest, you aren't doing this professionally, crafts are about fun and relaxation.

Step 3: Roll the Bead

Beginning at the wide side of the triangle, roll the paper into a tight cylinder. To ensure that the bead stays intact, glue as you roll, covering the strip with glue. I used a glue stick for this.

Some tutorials say to roll it around something, however I found it easier to hold the bead in my fingers as I wrapped it.

Step 4: Finish the Bead

When you get towards the end of the bead, leave a strip, about an inch or so long. Use extra glue on this section to ensure that the bead will stay together.

If you are worried about it coming undone, or the very end of the strip coming up, use the glue stick to entirely cover it with glue.

Step 5: REPEAT!

Continue with these steps for each bead, making any where from 10-40 beads depending on what you're making/ how long it needs to be.

Make sure that as you make the bead, they coordinate, or else the necklace/bracelet/whatever will look very slapdash.

To make it easier to pick each bead for the necklace, i thought it was helpful to sort them by size and shade, so there could be some cohesion.

Step 6: Add Other Beads

To buffer the look of stacking all the magazine beads, I thought splitting them up with another be would be good, you can use anything from colored seed beads, to whatever small simple beads you like. Remember not to use anything too complicated or it will take away form the magazine beads.

For this, I used a bracelet of mine that was getting pretty tired. instead of having it fall apart in lecture, again, I thought it would be nice to recycle it. After all, this project is all about recycling useless things, like vogue from july.

Step 7: Pattern?

As you're stringing the beads, It may be good to have a pattern In mind, I changed mine up, putting a "spacer" every 2, 3, or 4 beads. This part is where the fun comes from, arrange them however you prefer. :)

Step 8: FINALLY!!!

Now you have strung the necklace, on to the "clasp." There are many options here; either buy a clasp and attach it, or tie the sting to make a continuous necklace. I chose the latter.

If you are going to tie it, make sure to tie it well, having all of your work fall onto the ground won't be as pleasing as it sounds.

VOILA! A recycled magazine necklace!