You’d like to give a little gift to your co-workers, neighbors, church friends, etc., but don’t have a lot of money to spend. Here is a simple, festive project that anyone who reads will find useful. All you will need is a bunch of old Christmas cards to recycle (or a box you found on clearance/sale), cutting tools of a sort, and a laminator (they’re only around $30 and are a good investment for all sorts of projects). Slice and dice your Christmas cards into bookmark shapes:

You can see here that I’m using rotary paper cutter. They are nice, but a straight-edge and an exacto knife or box cutter will work as well.

I decided that for one of the bookmarks I would use a pair of wavy-edged scissors (they cost a dollar). I think it turned out to be my favorite. These have all been run through the laminator twice to make sure they were sealed well close to the edges (I used a Scotch thermal laminator). After lamination they were trimmed.

Be careful with your laminator. One of my bookmarks got rolled up inside and I had to take apart the laminator to get it out. Look to see that the leading edge is coming out the other side (you’ll want to make your bookmarks long enough that you can see both ends when it goes half-way through). If it doesn’t come out the bottom, turn off your laminator and yank the bookmark out the top.

This Christmas card had little jewels attached to it. You can see the laminate didn’t quite seal around them perfectly, but it still looks good (what’s the point of making things if you don’t experiment every now and then?).

This one was my favorite. As I said, I like the wavy lines:

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve focused on ways to display or recycle your Christmas cards into beautiful ornaments and decorations for your home. Check out some of the other posts that cover this subject: Christmas Card Door Hanger, Pyramidal Christmas Trees, Woven Ornaments, 20-sided Sphere Ornaments, Christmas Card Mosaic, Christmas Card Wreath Merry Christmas!