Christmas is the season of gift-giving, and with great presents comes great amounts of gift wrappers (and Christmas cards). But these don’t necessarily have to go straight to the trash – some can be recycled or repurposed into cool stuff.
Here are some DIY crafts you can try out with your Christmas wrappers and cards:
Confetti
This is probably the simplest way to recycle Christmas gift wrappers. Right after the Christmas party is the New Year’s party. If you plan to welcome the new year with lots of confetti, you don’t need to run to the store to grab packs of it. If you have some leftover Christmas wrappers you can run them through a paper shredder and voila, you have some confetti!
Drawer liners
If you want to give your home a mini-makeover, you can start with giving life to some pieces of furniture that look plain or drab. Most Christmas wrappers are bright and festive, and if you’ve got a lot of spare wrappers you can use them to line your drawers to brighten them up and make them eye-catching. Follow this tutorial to learn how to line your shelves and drawers with Christmas gift wrappers.
Book / notebook wrappers
Aside from brightening up furniture, Christmas wrappers can also brighten up your stationery. If you want to add a little more “oomph” to your books, your planners, or your bullet journals, you can wrap the covers with recycled Christmas wrappers. Gift wrappers usually come in eye-catching colors and patterns, so using them to wrap your books and notebooks is a great way to add a pop of color to your stationery. Follow this easy tutorial to wrap your books and notebooks.
Party garlands
Aside from confetti, Christmas wrappers can also be converted into party garlands. All you need are a pair of scissors, a string, and some glue. Check out this tutorial to learn how to make a party garland out of recycled wrapping paper.
Gift bows
Wrapped presents look so pretty when topped with a big bow, but store-bought gift bows tend to cost a lot. But hey, you can recycle your Christmas gift wrappers and fashion them into neat gift bows to put a nice finishing touch on your wrapped presents! Follow this simple tutorial to make your own gift bows.
Packing material for storing fragile objects
If your wrapping paper is all crumpled or torn to shreds, don’t worry, it’s not beyond saving. While crumpled or tattered wrapping paper might not be good for decoration, it’s still pretty useful. One way to salvage them is to keep them as lining in boxes for when you’re storing fragile objects.
When you do your post-holiday clean-up, you can safely put away fragile Christmas decorations like snow globes and Christmas ornaments in boxes lined with crumpled wrapping paper. Alternatively, similar to the confetti, you can also make the wrapping paper into packing material by running it through a paper shredder.
Homemade envelopes
Christmas wrappers can also be recycled to make cute little envelopes. If you like sending little notes of encouragement to your friends, you can make it even more personalized if the notes come in envelopes you crafted yourself. Check out this simple tutorial to learn how you can upcycle leftover Christmas wrappers into envelopes.
Bookmarks
Collecting pretty bookmarks is a great hobby, but it’s also nice to make your own. For this one, you can use both Christmas wrappers and Christmas cards if you want. You can cut out a used folder for the body of the bookmark, then decorate as you see fit with leftover Christmas wrappers and cut-outs from Christmas cards.
Gift tags
While Christmas wrappers make for good gift bows, Christmas cards can be repurposed into cute gift tags that you can start stocking up on for when next year’s holiday season rolls around. You can check out this tutorial on how to make neat gift tags out of recycled Christmas cards.
Christmas ornaments
There are plenty of Christmas tree ornaments in shops, but if you want to have a more creative and personalized touch to the decorations for your Christmas tree, why not make your own ornaments? You can craft your own ornaments using art materials, and if you want to be eco-friendly about it, you can recycle old Christmas cards. You can try out this tutorial to make Christmas ornaments out of old greeting cards.
