Ten Ways to Recycle Your Christmas Cards

If your family is anything like mine around Christmas time, an entire drawer in your kitchen becomes full of Christmas cards from colleagues, aquaintences, family and friends. While Christmas cards are fun to look at during the Christmas season, they just take up space once the New Year comes around, so here are ten ways to recycle your Christmas cards.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #1: Christmas Jigsaw Puzzle

If your kids (or even you) enjoy jigsaw puzzles, consider cutting up all of your Christmas cards to make a custom homemade puzzle. Using a ruler, cut several cards into large pieces (making sure to keep the lines as straight as possible) and keep the pieces in a shoebox or Tupperware container. Next year, when Thanksgiving is over and you're beginning to prepare for Christmas, you can get the family in the Christmas mood by pulling out the pieces and putting them together.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #2: Christmas Tree Ornaments

This is a great game for the kids on a lazy afternoon. Purchase several packages of candy canes (they're super cheap after Christmas) and empty them out onto a workspace, such as a kitchen table. Let the kids bundle the candy canes into groups, then cut out pictures from Christmas cards. Tie the bundles of candy canes with ribbon, then paste the pictures from the cards around the bundle. They make great homemade ornaments, and your kids can have fun decorating the tree next year.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #3: Christmas Mobile

These work great for small children or babies. Cut favorite pictures from Christmas cards into equally sized small clippings. Then attach several ribbons to a wire coat hanger and glue the pictures to the ends of the string. It makes a really nice Christmas mobile, which you can hang from the ceiling in the kids' rooms.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #4: Christmas Screen Saver

It's Christmas decoration for the technology age! Cut clippings from your favorite Christmas cards and scan them onto your computer's hard drive. Using Photoshop or another photo program, make collages with the cards and even with the sayings written on the inside. You can also use these to make festive desktop images or pictures for your website.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #5: Christmas Confetti

Does your dining room table look rather bare every Christmas morning? Cut up Christmas cards to make Christmas confetti and you can spread the clippings over the table next year. Just don't make too small of confetti or it will be a ridiculously difficult job to clean up.

Recycle Your Christmas Cards #6: Christmas Tree Skirts

Let your kids create a homemade Christmas tree skirt with images from Christmas cards. Purchase a red-and-green sheet from the store or fashion a skirt from pieces of felt. Then use a glue gun to attach pictures from Christmas cards to the top of the skirt.