Decorate your Christmas tree with these cute recycled crafts
Why buy new materials for your Christmas crafts from the shop when you can reuse and recycle? Decorations from recycled materials are not only eco-friendly but also cheaper and just as beautiful.
These lovely decorations for your Christmas tree are made from recycled paper, such as old wrapping paper or pages from books. If you don't have any books you don't need, we suggest heading to the library where they often give out old books for free.
Easy shapes to get started with include circles and hearts. Before long, you'll have the skills for trickier ones, such as stars. Any shape works, as long as it's symmetrical.
Here's what you need:
- Gingerbread cutters or other cutters. Alternatively you can use a roll of tape or a glass to make circles.
- Sturdy recycled paper
- Scissors
- A pen
- A needle and wire thin enough to get through the needle's eye. If you don't have wire, normal thread will do fine.
How it's done:
Use a cutter to draw 14 shapes on the paper of your choice. Cut them out.
Fold each piece of paper in half and then open it again.
Put your pieces of paper in two piles, one with the fold facing up and the other with the fold facing down.
Cut an approximately 40 cm long piece of wire or thread and put it through the eye of the needle.
Attach the pieces of paper in each pile together by wrapping the wire around them along the fold. Put the piles facing each other so that they resemble the shape of a ball. To ensure that the wire doesn't unravel later, use the needle to make little holes at the top and bottom of the folds and thread the wire through them. You probably can't get the needle through 14 pieces of paper at one go, so you can do this in stages. If you're using thread rather than wire, it's best to make several holes along the fold and sew the pieces together.
Tighten the wires and wrap their ends around each other. If you're using a thread, just make a tight knot.
Use the rest of the wire or thread to make a loop for hanging the decoration in the tree.
Some of the papers may be stuck together or less open than others. Fold them out until the decoration looks nice and even.
Hang your decoration up!
