Green, DIY Pop-Up Holiday Card Making Craft

'Green', 'Inexpensive' and 'DIY' are this holiday season's buzzwords. Here is a Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa craft that is all three: pop-up holiday cards made right from your recycle bin; with free printable stencils, they are darn near free. Recycle bin pop-up cards are great fun to make. They are easy, creative and make excellent holiday crafts for special needs students, handicapped and disabled people and senior citizens. Paper folding is a great way to practice and exercise fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination. I'll list the materials you'll need and then explain how to make pop-up holiday greeting cards.

Materials:

-Large assortment of multi-colored, recycled scrap construction paper and copy paper. Pop-up holiday greeting cards are a great way to use up all that scrap paper that accumulates and takes up space.

-glue sticks or watered down school glue with paint brushes or Q-Tips to apply glue

-scissors (Fiskars makes an inexpensive quality scissors for any sized hand.)

-decorative edged scissors (Wal-Mart sells a set of seven decorative edged scissors for $7 in the craft department.)

-markers to write greeting

-holiday cookie cutters (optional)

-free printable stencils (click here)

Procedure:

-Choose the design. Using the free printable templates or cookie cutters, trace holiday shapes on different colored scraps of construction paper: ornaments, bells, presents, Christmas tree, angels, nativity scene characters, candy cane, snowman, Santa Claus, star, sleigh, dreidel, menorah, Star of David (for Hanukkah). Students might decorate or add details to the shape, or leave them as one solid color.

-To make holiday shapes 'pop up', Take small strips of construction paper and fold them accordion style (backward, forward, backward, etc.). The longer the strip, the farther out the object will pop. Glue the folded strip to the back of the object and attach to the inside of a folded piece of construction paper. When the card is closed, the shape will press flat. When opened, the shape will pop up.

-You can make pop shapes by cutting holiday shapes and adding small rectangles to each side to make flaps. Fold the shape in half down the middle and fold the flaps or tabs under. Place the shape, flap side facing in and folded side facing out, in the fold of the card, gluing flaps to either side of the fold. When the card is open, the shapes glued down the fold will pop open.

I have used this craft project countless times. Students always enjoy the 3D and pop-up effects of their greeting card. For more green, easy holiday crafts, visit me at www.greencrafts.blogspot.com.