Crafty Wednesday – Leftover cards

Now that the holidays are over you may be wondering what to do with all those leftover cards from friends and family. It doesn’t feel right to just throw them out because it feels disrespectful to those who gave them to you (and it’s not very green), but we can’t keep years and years of cards in a dresser drawer.

Here are some fun crafts you can do with the cards with your kids.

1. Have your child cut the front of a pretty, glittery card into a couple of strips to use as a bookmark. This is especially fun for kids old enough to have started delving into chapter books (either on their own or being read to by you).
2. Use a marker to draw a jigsaw puzzle outline, then cut out the pieces. Have your child put it back together – this works well with cartoon-ish scene cards with Santas or snowmen on them.
3. Cut the picture into an oval or other shape, then paste it onto a piece of craft wood (you can get nice ones at the dollar store in their craft section). If you’d like, you can even verathane it. Then it can be hung up as a decoration.
4. Cut up random outlines, hand them over with a sheet of construction paper and a glue stick, and have your child create a collage.
5. Cards that don’t have a lot of glitter on them can be painted or drawn on with markers or crayons.
6. Use them as a geography lesson, especially if your friends and family are far-flung. Find a map and help your child find the location that matches all the cards that you received.
7. Just hand over a stack of cards and see what they do with them without any prompting at all – I’m often amazed at the creativity my kids can have when given the green light to do whatever they want (you know, within reason).

Do you have other crafty card ideas? Let me know!

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