Recycled Magazine Page Gift Bow Tutorial

Let’s learn how to make this Magazine Page Gift Bow Tutorial today! This is a great way to recycle old magazines, save some money, and make really creative gift bows for holiday and birthday gifts. Here’s what you’ll need!

Check out my Poinsettia Hair Bow Tutorial, too!

Magazine Page Gift Bow Tutorial

Supplies:

• Magazine. You can also use leftover gift wrap or anything that’s fairly thin and has a nice pattern.
• Permanent adhesive roller.
• Stapler.
• Paper cutter or scissors and ruler.
• Scotch tape or double sided tape (to attach bow to the gift)

Gift bows are really easy to make, and can even be made by tweens and up once they get the hang of it. Start by looking through your magazine for patterns and colors that go together. I found these two pages with similar color schemes and minimal writing that are perfect for this. Magazines with lots of full page photos like fashion magazines or home decor magazines are especially good. Now just rip out your pages, and we’re going to cut a bunch of strips.

All the strips are going to be 1 inch wide. You’ll need 3 that are 10.5 inches long, 3 that are 9.5 inches long, and 3 that are 8.5 inches long. Plus you’ll need a 5 inch long strip for the center of the bow. This ends up making a bow that is 4 inches wide, and you can easily make your bow larger or smaller by changing the length of the strips. Just make sure that there’s a 1 inch difference between each set of 3 strips.

Grab your longest set of strips first. You’ll always want the photo side that you want to show to be down on the table. So just remember, wrong side up! Fold your strip in half to find the middle, and open it back up. Place some adhesive in the middle, and loop one end of the strip around like shown and press the end onto the adhesive. It’s similar to making the shape of a cause ribbon.

Now put some more adhesive on top of where that end landed in the center, and loop the other side of the strip around as well. However, you’ll want to come from the opposite direction. It will look like and infinity symbol, and you can see how that shape of the bow is going to be formed. Go ahead and do the same thing with the other two strips.

Now go ahead and place a bit of adhesive in the center of two of your loops, and set them all together with the non-sticky one on the top. All the loops should fit neatly next to each other. And you have your first layer! Go ahead and so this same thing with the other two sets of loops. When you have those all done, place a bit of adhesive in the center of your largest layer.

And set the next smaller layer on top, making sure to set the points of the loops in between the points of the bottom layer. And then do this again with this smaller layer. Now you’re going to take your little 5 inch strip and roll it into a loop. Check to make sure that it will fill up the center open space in your bow, and seal the end shut.

Then add a bit of adhesive on this loop and stick it in the center of your bow! Your bow will stay just fine like this, but to make it a bit more professional and super strong, I like to take a small stapler and, moving the center loop aside just enough to get the stapler in there, staple all the layers together.

To attach it to a present, just make a loop with standard clear tape or use double sided tape, and just stick it on there!

And you’re all done! This is a great project to work on later at night while watching Christmas movies, or a fun project for your older kids to work on during a surprise snow day. I hope you enjoyed this Magazine Page Gift Bow Tutorial!