Christmas is just around the corner and holiday cards will start showing up in less than month! If you’re like me, you likely still have a pile of Chrsitmas cards hanging out in the Christmas decor. It’s so hard to just throw them away. I can’t throw away my friends and families faces! I did a little research/ made up a few fun things you can do with all of your holiday cards! I also asked the wonderful world of C.R.A.F.T. facebook what they do with their Christmas cards, and got a lot of fun responses, so be sure and check out that list too.
1. Use holiday card pictures as contact photos
Just snap a picture of the Christmas card and use it as that person’s contact photo in your phone! You can take a picture of the entire card or just a picture of the main image. I chose to use the main image. That way when they call you get to see their pretty faces!
2. Turn cards into gift tags
Holiday cards typically come on nice thick card stock, so up-cycle the cute critters on the holiday cards and turn them into gift tags. This is a great craft project for the kids!
I made 3 gift tags out of one card. If the back of the gift tags are not plain, simple cut our a peice of white card stock and glue it the back of the gift tag. Voila!
3. Make a garland
Cut the cards into squares, punch 2 holes and string! Super easy.
4. Make postcards
Cut the front side of the card off and draw on post card lines! Voila!
5. Donate cards to charity
Make sure there is no writing on the back side of the front of the card. Fair to note, St. Jude’s Ranch can not except Hallmark, Disney, or American Greeting cards due to copyright laws.
6. Use as scrapbook material
Cut out words and images on the cards to use on your Chrsitmas scrapbook pages!
7. Make ornaments for next year
These adorable DIY ornaments can be made with any kind of patterned paper, but I love hte idea of recycling holiday cards from prior years.
8. Frame cards
9. Turn cards into puzzles
Just cut each card into a few pieces and place in a zip lock bag. They make perfect little busy bag activities for kids!
10. Make a Chrsitmas tree decoration
(Oringially from Loriscraftyspot.com.)
I cut mine up and use them to make cards to give next year mostly. I’ve also made little tiny gift boxes from them.
You’ve found some great ideas, I’m always happy to find some new things to save them from the bin.
FINALLY. Something I can do with all of the pretty cards I get. I hate throwing them away.
These are fantastic ideas! I love sending postcards. What a great direct swap these would make for a postcard group.
I’ve never done a post card group, but that sounds super fun!
This is an older post, but I like to make boxes from old greeting cards, too: http://squeezeyourcreativejuice.blogspot.com/2010/12/recycle-christmas-cards-how-to-make.html
My husband tossed all of ours when I was out one day. Boo! These are such clever ways to reuse them, thanks for sharing (: XO
Very fun ideas! I’ll have to save some of these for next year. They would work for Valentines too!
Such adorable ideas – I’ll have to bookmark this for next year!