Papier-Maché Magazine Holder

Working in magazine publishing means I have a lot of magazines hanging around! A mixture of the magazine I work on and other women's, lifestyle and craft mags (all in the name of research obviously!). So I decided I needed some way of storing them rather than putting them in a pile on my floor and bought a magazine holder. It was a plain wooden holder which definitely needed some jazzing up, but rather than painting it I decided to do some papier-maché - something I haven't done since I was a child!


The inspiration for this came from a visit to William Wordsworth's house in the Lake District last summer (strange place to find inspiration, I know!). His wife had covered the walls with newspaper, presumably to keep it warm or cover up the bare walls, and my Dad and I spent ages reading the old newspapers from hundreds of years ago. Although my newspaper-covered magazine holder probably won't be visited by tourists in future centuries it will be pretty cool to look at it in a few months or years time and read about the events going on in the world!

Papier-maché is really simple and all you need is some newspaper and PVA glue and it is pretty much just a case of applying a layer of PVA glue to the magazine holder, layering the newspaper on top and covering it with another layer of PVA glue to keep it in place and give it a nice shine. Although you can have some fun being artistic and arranging the ripped up newspaper artfully.


The only thing to be careful of is waiting for one side to dry before beginning on the other or you will end up with wet glue on all sides and no way of standing it up to dry without getting glue everywhere! I did one big side, front, back and bottom and left it to dry overnight and then did the other side and the inside.


Et voilà a really simple way of personalising an object. When my magazine collection has outgrown this holder I am planning to cover my next one in a pretty wallpaper.