For this week’s tip, I thought I would talk about what on earth to do with all of those Christmas cards you received over the holidays. Don’t throw them out! You can recycle & re-purpose them like I do and save some money in the process. In an earlier post I talked about how framing beautiful ( I like to use vintage looking ones personally) cards makes an inexpensive and nice gift. If you haven’t seen that post and want to know how I do that on a budget, you can click HERE. So that is one thing you could do with any particular cards you received that are especially pretty. Either frame them for some inexpensive holiday decor for yourself next year, or frame several of them for gifts next year. Just rip off the card cover and frame that. If there are any words behind the cover , you can always glue a piece of card stock to the other side to cover them if you want.
Today’s card re-purpose though is for next years gift tags! I used several Christmas card covers for gift tags this year and they not only made the packages look really pretty, but that was one less thing I had to buy. Here are some tips for recycling Christmas cards in to gift tags:
- Do you ever get those Christmas card samples in the mail? I received several last year and they are only the front of a card (hence the sample) , that says it’s a sample and tells you ordering info on the back. Those were sent to me for free and so I kept them all and used them this year as tags (pictures are below!)
- This of course works best with cards that have a lot of white space for writing, but if you have a dark card (like black, deep green, navy, red, etc), just use a silver metallic gel pen, or any other light colored pen to do the writing with.
- As mentioned above, if there is writing on the back of card front, you can cover it up
- I typically use the full card, but if you have a smaller package, or want to do something different, just cut out a portion of the card cover that you think is pretty (such as a tree, bird, maybe a snowman, cottage, whatever little section of the card you like) and you can use a stencil to cut a shape out for the tag. Get creative with shapes! Circle, square, rectangle of course are easiest if you don’t have stencils, but you could do stars, hearts, tree shapes, gingerbread men shapes, angels , etc. In this case, you would write the to and from on the white space at back of card, and then use a hole punch to have a hole to thread some string through to hang it from your package.
- You can enhance the tags (whether using a full one or a small shape cut out) if you want with glitter, various borders (think ribbon, twine, sparkly pipe cleaners, etc) around the edge , or any other extras you want to get crafty with. It may take a little extra time, but I bet they will look amazing!
Pardon the Flash. I don’t have good overhead lighting and sometimes have to take my photos at night ( I prefer natural light).
One last idea I had as far as recycling cards goes is to use the same decorated gift tag idea I mentioned above and turn them in to tree ornaments. You can write (or cut and paste their signature) who the card is from on the backs and that way you can keep the cards for a memory. I plan on doing these and the more decorated tags as soon as I get to feeling better, but I will save the photos and the instructions on that for next Christmas ;).
I hope you are all staying well with this Flu thing that seems to be going on all across the USA right now! I will be able to post more regularly here in a few days and have lots of fun stuff I look forward to doing with We Live Inspired this year (a link up party, more free stuff for you, and more, but I can’t give it all away yet ;)) If you do have suggestions though of things you would like to see more of, just send me an email at live.inspired.b@gmail.com. I can write on any topic and would be happy to explore areas that matter to you.
Take care, Rebekah
Question- Do you have anything special you do to recycle your Christmas Cards?
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Great idea! Preloved cards also make great (mini) gift boxes.
http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-box.html
I use the back of the card for the base and the front for the lid… hope you’re feeling better soon 🙂
I haven’t thought of that! I will have to check out that link. Thanks for sharing. I am feeling better now, day by day! I will get back to normal here soon…I swear! 🙂
I gave made gift tags out of cards before. I never thought of making them into fun shapes! Hope you are better soon!
I am pretty much all better except for a cough that won’t go away. Thanks for the well wishes and thanks for stopping by 🙂