The Recycled Holiday Ornament Challenge: Make Christmas and Holiday Ornaments Out Of Recycled or Reused Products – Greeting Card Creativity

According to the Greeting Card Association, U.S. consumers purchase around 7 billion greeting cards each year, with the average household buying approximately 30 individual cards in a year. This generates nearly $7.5 billion in retail sales. This also generates a whole lot of paper waste.

Imagine the waste that 7 billion envelopes generates yearly? Saving landfill space is critical, and reusing the envelopes as notepaper, then recycling them after that makes common sense. Greeting cards can be reused in numerous ways, and a creative craft idea for the holidays is to make them into holiday ornaments. Perfect for the Recycled Holiday Ornament Challenge, and particularly easy for both children and the elderly to accomplish.

Recycled Holiday Tree Challenge Rules – the components must be -

1. Reused, or
2. Recycled, or
3. Garage Sale Purchased, or
4. From a Resale Shop, or
5. From the Natural Environment

Any craft parts beyond glue, staples, and needle/thread also need to be from a resale shop or disassembled and reused from a previous source.

How To Make A Greeting Card Ornament 

Supplies:

Used greeting cards

Scissors and Hole Puncher

Ribbon

How To:

Choose a greeting card and decide the part of the greeting card design you would like to feature as an ornament.

Cut it out – circular shapes seem to be the most attractive, however, work with each greeting card design individually. Use your creative mind to choose the best “picture” you would like on the front of your ornament.

Punch a hole at the top of the ornament. Hang.

Voila! Complete.

These ornaments, if stored flat, last a lifetime and make wonderful gifts from children which are easy to mail or use as gift tags for presents as well.

Please send photos and links so we can see what you have done with holiday trees to help save the landfills. Thanks!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Comments

[Shawna Coronado]

Interesting ideas - and Nils - I wonder the same as well. However, we are a species that loves art. Greeting cards are a form of art - it seems like they will continue to stay around. :-)

Shawna

[Nils Montan]

With the advent of ecards, I wonder how much longevity the old fashioned greeting card has anymore.

[Marianne Arkins]

We use our cards as gift tags each year as well. It's a fun challenge for my DD to try to make as many as she can from each card, and still have them look good! :-)

[babs m]

We always use last year's greeting cards to make gift tags for this year--just cut out the pretty pictures and write your gift info on the back. You get to enjoy your cards twice and also share them!