A good part of my posts over the last two weeks have focused on recycling your old Christmas Cards into decorations for the home (Christmas Card Door Hanger, Pyramidal Christmas Trees, Woven Ornaments, 20-sided Sphere Ornaments, Christmas Card Mosaic). So, my wife, Dixie, suggested a Christmas Card Wreath. Later on, she said that she imagined using a grapevine wreath as a base, but what came into my imagination was a wreath made entirely out of Christmas cards. I thought the biggest problem would be that Christmas cards are naturally two-dimensional, and I couldn’t imagine a two-dimensional wreath looking very festive. So that became the hurdle and here is the result:

You’ll need quite a few Christmas Cards of varying sizes to complete this project, as well as glue, cutting implements, a whole punch and various spacers (to give it that three dimensional feel). I decided to recycle the piece of illustration board I accidentally ‘curled’ with paint last week as a base (it had been intended for the Christmas Card Mosaic project, but I ended up using something else). To begin with I trimmed it into a square and cut a sizeable circle in the middle with a circle cutter.

Next, I lopped off the corners to give it a ’stop sign’ shape. It is all going to be covered up, so it doesn’t need to be a perfect circle.

I glued some strips of the excess board to the back to take the curl permanently out of the board . . .

. . . and then punched a whole in the top end for hanging it when the project was finished. You can hang it with other means if you wish, there are picture hanging tabs for light-weight projects like this that peel-and-stick on to paper, etc. I chose the simplest hanging mechanism.

Now comes the first layer of cards. This is a good place for cards you are NOT crazy about. Later on, only the corners of these cards will be showing. I used regular Elmer’s glue, spread around thinly with my finger, to attach the cards and for all the rest of the glueing. If you are concerned with longevity, you may want to look into more permanent adhesives. However, I used a LOT of glue in this project, so maybe it will hold together fine. Time will tell.

The second layer of cards should be again, ones you are not crazy about. Some of the cards tend to curl when you apply the glue; just put a heavy book on them for a moment and that will take care of that.

For the next layer of cards, I wanted to start building up a more three-dimensional feel, so I broke out some wooden shapes I picked up at a garage sale. The shape doesn’t matter, so use anything you have. I could have used card board, but these were handy.

Hearts aren’t my thing, so I used them first:

The first layer on spacers:

Another layer:

This next layer is the final, complete Christmas card layer. You’ll want to reserve some smaller cards for this layer. This is a good place to showcase handmade Christmas cards and cards with 3-D elements, like the hanging mittons card shown here:

The above cards were put in a ring, closing the center whole a little. To add a finishing touch, I now added some cut-outs from cards. These were placed on little wooden spools (I got them at a garage sale, but they’re available at craft stores - anything with some real depth, that you can ‘hide’ under the cut-outs, will work). I used variously sized circle and square cut-outs as well as a couple of irregular shapes.

That completes this Christmas Card Wreath. All in all, it was a simpler project that the mosaic I made last week. A few hours and I think it really hits the ‘festive’ spot.

Merry Christmas!