holidaycardsrecycled.pdf    

My Grandmother was a professional recycler, and I’ll bet many of yours were too!  They lived through the Great Depression and they knew how to stretch a dollar.  Or maybe I should say a dime in those days!  Anyway, I’ve started to rethink the way I handle all my discards and holiday greeting cards are just one more thing to rethink. 

Holiday greeting cards bring joy into your home at the holidays as you read the sentiments from family and friends, but they also bring in beautiful artwork.  Artwork that is difficult for me to throw away!  Well, there’s no need to toss those cards you especially love because there are several things you can do with them.  Take a look!

Cards as Art!

How about treating those lovely winter scenes, sparkling snowmen and charming Santas with the respect they deserve by framing them!  I have done this for years and I have quite a nice collection of small framed “prints” that I can scatter around the house at the holidays.  In no way is this disrespectful to the artwork, but I must say that these small pictures work very nicely in the ….uh….er….powder rooms in my home!  As you can see in the first photo, they tuck in nicely with the greenery, or among toiletries to give a nice touch of the season to a busy room in the home.

All you need is a variety of holiday cards, some empty photo frames and a pair of scissors.

Simply use the back panel of the frame or even pull out the glass and place it on the card and trace around it.

 Cut along your pencil lines.

Insert the photo into the frame.

Close it up and display!

Cards as Gift Tags!

This card has all sorts of possibilities for gift tags.  The framed snowman is perfect, just write the “To:” and “From:” on the back, the “Happy Holidays” sentiment could be a tag, as could the edges around the snowman with the pretty red and white snowflake design.  Oh, this is getting exciting!

A hole punch and some pretty satin ribbon finish off several gift tags in just minutes!

Cards as a Seasonal Wreath!

The materials are inexpensive and the time invested is very little.  This would be a great project for your kids.  They could make a wreath for their bedroom or closet door!  Grab a 12” by 12”piece of cardboard, a ruler, pencil, scissors, double stick tape, holiday cards and ribbon.

First find the center of the 12” by 12” piece of cardboard.  Mark it with an “x”.

Mark off a 6” circle in the center of the cardboard.  This will be the opening in the center of the wreath.

Draw the center circle and move on to the outside circle of the wreath.

Add another three inches all the way around the center circle, connect the dots to draw a full circle and cut out the cardboard wreath.

Now the real fun begins as you choose your cards and cut around the designs!

Play around with the arrangement of the cards, overlapping and mixing and matching to show off the best portions of each card.  You may want to consider placing the cards so the top half and the bottom half both show off the cards right side up as you can see in the photo.

Last, add a ribbon to the back and hang your recycled greeting cards wreath proudly!

There are so many other ideas for last year’s greeting cards.

*Let your children cut out designs from last year’s cards and glue them onto construction paper to make their own cards for friends and family for this year!

*Cut out designs with a hole punched out and ribbon could be this years new Christmas tree ornaments!

*String cards along a pretty red velvet ribbon and use them as a garland for your fireplace.

*Last years’ cards can make great bookmarks to be given with a book or bookstore gift card this year!

So by now you must agree that saving last years Christmas cards makes sense, can help to create fun projects for your family, and can also help save a few dollars this holiday season!

Shari