Make a pretty butterfly garland from old magazine pages. A simple and easy upcycling idea.

Make butterflies from the pages of old magazines and turn them into a garland. 

I experimented with a few different sizes of paper to get a good size for a garland but you can size these up or down as you prefer.

To make your own recycled magazine butterfly garland you will need: 

• An old magazine

• Embroidery thread, cord or string

• Scissors

• A tapestry needle - a big needle with a large eye

How to make paper butterflies from old magazine pages

Cut the magazine into squares, to make a 115cm (45”) garland with 10 butterflies you'll want:

• 10 x 8cm (3”) squares and

• 10 x 6cm (2.25”) squares

Folding the paper butterfly wings

Take one of the larger squares and fold it in half then concertina each half.

Fold in half and pinch firmly in the middle. 

Take one of the smaller squares and round off the corners (you can do this on a pile of these at a time) then concertina that too. Then fold it in half and pinch as before.

Tying the centres

Place the 2 wings together, then wrap a length of embroidery thread round a few times then tie in a double knot at the top and trim to make little antennae.     

Make a load more! I made 10 in total.

Join to form a garland

To turn this lovely pile of butterflies into a garland cut a long length of embroidery thread or string and thread onto your tapestry needle. Mine was about 120cm (47”) and my garland ended up approx 115cm (45”)

Starting at the bottom of the garland poke the needle through the wrapped thread at the bottom of a butterfly and make a stitch, leaving a long tail for tying the garland up. Then bring the thread up the side of the butterfly and make another stitch through the wrapped thread at the top - this is hard to describe, look at the photos, hopefully they will help! 

Originally I thought I would be able to sew the embroidery thread right through the butterflies, It turned out that was too tough for me to get a needle through. 

You can just tie the butterflies to a cord, thread or string but I found that when I tried that they turned in all different directions. You may like that so if the direction of your butterflies doesn't matter to you then just tie the at intervals to your thread, that's MUCH quicker and easier. 

If however, if like me, you DO want your butterflies all facing the same way, the 'stitch top and bottom'  method described above is the only one I found that worked. Maybe a dob of glue on each one might hold them in place?

Then all you need to do is hang your recycled magazine page butterfly garland somewhere and admire its loveliness! 

This is the mirror in our daughter's room,you can see in the reflection the cross stitch mural on her wall.

I had a couple of spare paper butterflies from my garland so I’ve been using them as sweet little embellishments on gift bags.

Check out some more crafts made with old magazines here:

If you love upcycling and recycled crafts you might like to check out all my other upcycling ideas here too:

I’ll be sharing this idea at some of these link ups

Julie