Making gift tags from your Christmas cards

What to do with the pile of leftover Christmas cards once the tree is down and the decorations are packed away?  You can put them in the recycling bin, or take them to a local supermarket who recycles them for charity, or you could recycle them for yourself and make your own unique gift tags for next Christmas!

This job took under two hours and before you start you need the following:

• Pile of Christmas Cards
• Scissors or craft knife or guillotine
• Plain Tags
• Twine or ribbon
• Glue
• Coloured pens (if you wish)
• Other decorations (if you wish)

Once you’ve laid everything out it’s time to start. I sorted out the cards we received and I discarded some because they wouldn’t make a good card in the style that I would like.

Next, I went through the cards and carefully removed all the additional bits and pieces that are stuck to the cards, such as sequins, ribbons, etc – these might come in handy!

Then I started to cut around the different pictures and glued them on:

Some of the cards I added some additional jewels to and charms and others I left plain:

I also chose some smaller tags and thinner twine for some child friendly cards, and these worked out really fun as well.

The tags and twine were a couple of pounds from Hobbycraft for a large packet, but if you’re anything like me you’ll have a handy craft box with a few things stashed away.

And here’s the finished result, what do you think?

The beauty of this project is that you can be as simple or elaborate as you like and you know that no-one else will have the same cards as you.  Then once you start to wrap the presents later in the year you can add holly or eucalyptus leaves as you like.

The other brilliant way to make tags is with wallpaper, fabric or you could be really cute and personalise the tags with photos of the recipient.  Either way it makes for a unique gift tag that makes you really stand out from the crowd.

What other ideas have you got for using the old Christmas cards?