I have proper magazine holders that I bought from Wal-Mart a million years ago; they're the perfect size for the amount of magazines I typically have on hand at one time and they sit nicely on my desk. But for a few of my classes this year my professors have asked us to keep old magazines on hand to cut out pictures for projects, and so I started saving magazines once I was done reading them, and they started piling up fast and I had nowhere to keep them.
I had bought a hair styling equipment holder from Bed Bath & Beyond that houses my hair dryer, curler and straightener, and I have to say it's been a handy addition to my dresser. There's also a hook so you can hang it on your bathroom door or towel rack (photo below). I held onto the box it came in for a while, since it was a great size and I thought I'd be able to find something useful to use it for. Turns out I did.
Before you start painting, cut off the top of the box so your magazines can stick out a bit if they need to (the box I used just happened to be shorter than the magazines). I used 3 coats of paint on mine, since the paint colour is kind of light and I needed to cover the picture on the box. If you're using a darker colour, you should only need about 2 coats, but feel free to do as many as you want to get the perfect colour.