What to do with those Christmas Cards?

Here's a few environmentally friendly ideas for your Christmas cards now that the season is behind us. Recycling them provides companies such as Seventh Generation the post consumer paper it needs to produce their toilet paper, facial tissue, paper towels, and napkins. Whole Foods market makes their brand of these products under the 365 label. Even Staples sells printer paper made of 100% post consumer recycled paper. Don't forget to buy these items or it does little good to recycle.

Reusing your Christmas cards and to/from tags is an even better option. If you have to/from tags that open like greeting cards, keep the front of the tags and cut off the writing portion. Most of my tags this year were from the year before which also saves money. As for your holiday cards, you can cut out some of the pretty images and glue them onto a new piece of card stock to send out next year. This is a fun project for the kids to help you with.

If you like to keep your cards and all the photographs that come with them, the photo above is a scrapbook page made of Christmas cards. I saw this project a couple years ago on Two Peas in a Bucket. You cut up some of your cards into 1 1/2" squares and apply them to a 12"x12" piece of scrapbook card stock. This page has a pocket in it to hold all those cards with photos or handmade designs that you want to save. Now you have a beautiful scrapbook page and a safe place to keep those holiday cards and pictures.