Magazine Fans for Anne Marie

Bruce and I were out for a very rare date night a few months back (Thanks "maga") and saw an idea for Anne Marie's wall. jCrew had paper fans constructed from magazine pages mounted in their window displays.

We analyzed the structure of these "fans" and determined that this was something we could do. Upon coming back home, we researched ways to construct them.

Our first step was to go through old magazines for pages with vivid colors. We tried to omit pages with a lot of white. After tearing out multiple pages, Bruce remembered an old technique that his daddy used while he was young. He took the magazines out to the table saw and cut the binding off. The page sorting really took off then.

We went through the pages and sorted them into color piles. We both agreed that we wanted the fans to be grouped by colors.

They were folded accordian style and stapled end to end. The first two we assembled were left full size. They were rich browns and tans and look fantastic on Anne Marie's bright green wall. Some of the others were combinations of blues and greens with only about 2 inches cut off the height, reds and pinks cut at about 2/3 of the original size, yellows and oranges cut at 1/2 the original size, and blues and purples cut at about 1/3 of the original size.

After the pages were stapled, we laid the pages face down and formed them into a circular pattern very carefully. This process took about 6 hands at one point! While holding it firmly in the center, a small piece of cardboard was hot glued to the center of the fan to hold it's shape.

We hot glued popsicle sticks to the back to give added support. This helped them to not pop up and lose their tight fold on the edges.

To mount the fans, Bruce took popsicle sticks and drilled holes in the top that were large enough to accompany a standard size nail head. These sticks were hot glued vertically near the top of the fan.

The different sizes and colors all came together perfectly.

The finishing touch to the fans is the best part. We had a bag full of Bruce's grandmother's old buttons that were a coral/pink color. She saved them as she saved most everything, and Bruce's mom had nostagia enough to keep them after her passing.

We hot glued these beautiful pink buttons to the center of each of the fans. Some fans have a cluster of three buttons while some of the small ones are more unique with just two buttons.
These buttons are the perfect color for Anne Marie's sheets!

We laid out all the fans, played with positions and groupings for a while, and finally came up with an arrangement we were satisfied with. We wanted to cover a great are of the wall with no symmetry or alignment. We are so thrilled with how these fans turned out! This project was tedious and time-consuming, but completely worth it. They make a great statement on the wall and will be great for our sweet Anne Marie to gaze at while laying in her crib.

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