Make Recycled Ornaments This Holiday Season

Decorating for the holidays can leave you wincing every time you step foot in a store. Despite your best intentions, you’ll likely find yourself spending more than you wanted on decorations. Between the lights from last year that are too tangled to use and those glass ornaments that you wrapped but still wound up broken, you might want to throw in the towel and skip decorating your home. Using items from around your house lets you create recycled ornaments that are just as cute as those found in stores. You can even get your kids involved in the process and make some ornaments that you hand out as gifts.

Old Jigsaws

Do you have a few jigsaw puzzles around the house that no longer have all the pieces? You can easily turn those old pieces into fun ornaments. Paint the front and back of each piece with a dark green paint and let dry. Arrange the pieces into small circles, adding glue between the pieces to create the shape of a wreath. Add fake red berries and other decorations with a glue gun. Once the ornament wreaths dry, attach a small piece of ribbon to the top of each one for hanging.

Christmas Card Garlands

Few things remind you of the holidays in the same way that garland does, but even a small piece of real garland might be beyond your budget. If you’re the type of person who hangs onto your old Christmas cards, you can turn those cards into a fun and colorful garland for your home. Cut a large triangle or pie-shaped piece from the front of each card. Fold the top inch of each card over. Apply a thin layer of glue inside this flap before placing it on a piece of string or ribbon and letting the glue dry. Repeat the process until you fill the string.

Inexpensive Snowflakes

Turn ordinary coffee filters into snowflakes that you can hang on your windows and tree and around your home. Fold the filters in half, and use a pair of scissors to cut a series of random shapes through both sides before unfolding the filters. You can hang the snowflakes with ribbon and use glitter to add some sparkle. To find other ways to decorate your home and see how others used recycled materials to decorate their trees, read through some of the top Balsam Hill reviews.