Recycle Christmas Cards Into Christmas Decor

Christmas cards are always a welcome greeting each year. They are all so beautiful that it is hard to throw them away when the holiday season is over. Because of this, why not just recycle Christmas cards to make them into some beautiful Christmas decor for the following year? It’s a great way to enjoy those beautiful images year after year.

Since there are so many different and beautiful patterns on Christmas cards, you have a wide variety of options for your decorating. I found several great craft tutorials that will help you to recycle Christmas cards into some sentimental decor that you can enjoy year after year.

How To Recycle Christmas Cards

Frame The Cards

Make a cute and festive wall display by simply framing some of your old cards. I love the bright red frames used for this display.

Make Decorative Christmas Trees

These whimsical Christmas card trees are a fun example of how you can display several different cards.  The tutorial is easy to follow so it would be no problem to make several of these for a forest of trees!

Recycle Christmas Cards Into Christmas Ornaments

You can never have too many Christmas ornaments!  These ornaments make a beautiful use out of Christmas cards. The only other thing that you need is a jar lid for framing. You can recycled Christmas cards and jar lids at the same time!

Recycled Christmas Card Magnets

Similar to the Christmas ornaments above, you could also adhere Christmas cards to a rustic wood slice. Then, use it for either an ornament on the tree or attach a magnet to the back for some fun seasonal magnets.

Make Festive Coasters

Still another easy way to use Christmas Cards is to place them into a mason jar lid and use them for holiday coasters.

Make A Christmas Wreath

A paper Christmas wreath is easy to make with recycled cards. Just cut out leaf shapes, from the cards, and adhere them to a cardboard wreath form.

Create Decorative Christmas Houses

These little houses make up a decorative Christmas village that would be fun to sit out on a table or shelf.  Use coordinating Christmas cards if you want a cohesive theme. Or, mix it all up for a fun variety.

Stack Cards To Make A Tree

To use up a lot of cards at once, you could make this fun Christmas tree. You don’t see the pictures in this craft so it would be a great way to use up the inside of cards as well.

Make A Decorative Garland

Create a three dimensional shape, with Christmas cards, and attach them to a strand of twine for a decorative garland for the tree.

Christmas Card Bookmarks

You can never have too many bookmarks but they are also fun to give away. It’s easy to make festive bookmarks as stocking stuffers using old Christmas cards.

Decorate A Scrapbook

This next idea is one that I have done myself several times.  Christmas card pictures make great embellishments for scrapbook albums or pages.

Make Decorative Gift Tags

How about passing along the Christmas greeting to someone else in the form of a gift tag? With all of the beautiful designs on Christmas cards, you can make a variety of pretty gift tags.

You could also cut out letters from the Christmas cards to use as monogram gift tags. These would be a fun way to identify the recipient as long as you didn’t have a group of people with the same initial!

Upcycled Christmas Card Bunting

Buntings are a festive way to decorate a mantel, window, or shelf. It’s easy to create a Christmas bunting using upcycled Christmas cards. Cut out circles or triangles, from your cards and string them on a large section of twine.

Make A Decorative Christmas Bowl

I never would have thought of making kitchenware with Christmas cards but here is a bowl made with a variety of cards.  This could be used to hold candy or lightweight objects.  It would also look nice being threaded with jute string and filled with small pine cones.

Make A Pretty Floral Arrangement

This last idea is for a “floral” arrangement using craft paper.  However, I thought it would be great to use recycled Christmas cards for a fun Christmas arrangement as well. 

Now that you have seen all that you can do with Christmas cards, you can feel good about holding on to them to recycle. You’ll also want to see how to recycle leftover wrapping paper! 

If you have any other ideas, feel free to share them in the comments below!

t