By Kid’s Crafts Contributor Stephanie, from the Blog A Geek in Glasses.

We get tons of catalogs in the mail everyday and I hate tossing them in the trash. Other than placing them in the recycling bin, what can you do with them?  My daughter loves the work of folding paper, so with this project we made paper spirals and use them as coasters for our summer beverages. We painted them up to look like slabs of wood because wooden coasters are a hot item right now, but there is no way I’m cutting a branch off of a tree, then slicing it up. These fakes look like the real thing from a distance and are fun to make.

Supplies:

• Magazines or catalogs with glossy finish
• Tacky Glue
• Paint – cream, light brown, dark brown
• Mod Podge
• Brushes

Start by cutting your glossy finished magazine page into 1″ strips.

Next, fold them in half, creating a center crease. Open the fold up and fold the one edge into the middle, then the next side into the middle, then refold the center crease. This creates a neatly folded 1/4″ strip. 

Start the spiral by dotting  a bit of tacky glue on the end of the strip and start rolling the strip of paper into a spiral.

After rolling the length the of paper into a spiral glue the end and then glue the next 1/4″ strip on and wrap it around. Continue until the disk is as large as you would like. 

We made them big enough for coasters.

Then we coated them with a layer of cream paint.

The edges are painted with the dark brown to look like the bark of the tree.

Once the paint had dried, we lightly dry brushed the tops of the spiral with the light brown color to make it look like the growth rings of a tree.

After all the paint had dried, it was covered on both the front and back with Mod Podge to seal it.