18 November 2013

Craft: Recycled Christmas card tree

This is a little different to the normal craft activities I publish on the blog. Normally I like to share a craft activity I've made with Popette, this time however it's something Popette has helped me make :)

The other day when I was going through my drawer, I found a bunch of old christmas cards. I thought rather than throwing them away, it would be great to make a craft out of them. My original idea was to make a wreath for the door (like this one on here), but I didn't have enough cards.

I then had another look at the holly leafs I already had cut out, and decided to make a christmas tree as a decorative piece.

 

All you need is:a bunch of old Christmas cards
Scissors
Pencil
Pins, tacks or hot glue gun
Foam board
Piece of material to cover board
Shiny beads

To make the holly leaf shape:
I drew a leaf about 13cm long and 5cm wide on a piece of card, which I cut out and used as a stencil so all the leafs were the same size. You can make your tree however big or small you want, it all depends on the amount of cards you cut out and the size of your board. My board is the size of an A3 piece of paper.

Using my stencil to cut out some holly leaf shapes
I didn't want to use glue for this craft, so I used some small pins to hold the fabric and cards to the board instead. This is handy if you want to play around with the colours.

To make the tree:

Starting at the bottom of the tree I started by overlapping 3 leafs across the board to form the first branch and shape of a christmas tree, once I got towards the top I only overlapped two cards then made room for a star. For our star I used some shiny embellishments I had in my sewing basket. But you could cut out a star shape out of card and place that on top.

Other ideas: You could pin some ribbon on the tree to make it look like tinsel, cut out some small circle card shapes to make baubels for the tree. Its all up to you and your imagination!

Popette helping me pick the cards
While this activity is a little old for toddlers and preschoolers, Popette still helped me by choosing what "leaf" to go next and handed me them along with a pin. This could be a fun activity for the older school aged kids to make or you could make it yourself :)

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