I have to admit friends, I don’t send out Christmas cards. It’s generally due to laziness, but also it stems from expense- when we were first married, we had some pretty hard times and I didn’t want to spend the money on stamps and cards to send them out to acquaintances.
Despite my lack of card sending, some of my dear friends faithfully send us cards, or we get some hand given at church. It leads me to think- what can I do with these when the holiday season is over? How can you save a few dollars and get a little more use out of a one use product, helping the environment in the process?
1.) Singled sided cards. Remove the back of the card. If the card is only signed on the back, you can make a clean cut and have single sided cards to share among friends and family next year! After all, it’s about the heartfelt message, right?
2.) Use them as gift tags! This works whether you have a cricut or not! Again, remove the back of the card and you can cut beautiful gift tags out of the scene on the front of the card! You could get several beautiful tags depending on the design and the size you cut. (I got four out of one card, as you can see above! If I wanted to cut plain white ones, I could have done several more.) As a bonus, you won’t have to buy as many (or any) for the next year- plus they are really stinking cute!
3.) Kids crafts! My daughter loves to make art- so rather than buying paper just for her to cut up, she can cut special shapes out of old Christmas cards and give her creations some extra pizazz! The bonus is when they will be recycled later anyway.
4.) Make Christmas Bunting! Whether you do it early in the season, or save it for next year, you can make beautiful Christmas bunting! This could be a fun project for the kiddos to do.