Balancing on a House of Cards

Tis the season and with it comes holiday cards. Like most I enjoy seeing the lovely holiday scenes and the warm wishes but after the holidays I feel a bit guilty and chagrined at having so many cards to dump/recycle. Not only does it feel wasteful but it also feels like I am throwing away memories. But if there is one thing my house does not need is a towering collection of holiday cards of years gone by. With that in mind I offer you this craft using old holiday cards and a 3 inch circle punch. It's a great way to save the memories by transforming them into something that is easy to store and that you can use each year.

Holiday PaperPunch Garland

Use this craft to spend some time talking with your kids about what the holidays means to you and your family. Punch out images of things that make you feel warm and loved and that bring to mind the ideas that your family holds dear. Punch out circles featuring candles and snow flakes, wise men and snow covered pine trees. Punch words and colors. Heck even punch that bare bottomed elf card from your crazy Aunt Sally. Punch in a wild or a precise manner but keep on punching till you have 30-50 "fronts" and a matching number of backs.

For the Garland you will need:

1) Card punched circles

2) Colored yarn long enough to make decent length garland -25 feet is a good start

3) Double stick tape/ scrapbooking tape/ glue dots. You can also use liquid or stick glue but that makes things MUCH more complicated and increases the wait time dramatically.

Take some time to match up your back and front circles so that they go well together, color and theme wise OR just go pot-luck. Either way it's going to look great!

Decide how close together you want your circles. I suggest a 1 inch space between each. This enables the garland to hang easily since it gives the circles room to tilt.

Take one circle/dot and apply your sticky stuff of choice to the WRONG side of the circle. Now lay the yarn along the center of the circle and sandwich the other dot on top of your now sticky dot with the yarn on it. The idea is to lock both the dots together with the yarn between them so that the dots DO NOT slide along the garland.

Keep going in this fashion until you are out of dots or in my case until your cat gets into the Christmas tree, eats some tinsel and comes to yack it up on the floor next to your chair. NOTHING spoils the holiday mood like "cat yack"

Now go hang up that work of beauty and see if you can identify who sent which card and what each circle means to the person who punched it out. If you do this craft each year for a few years running you will have plenty of garland to do even the biggest of trees! What a great way to remember all of those who have taken the time to send you a card!

When the holidays are over one of the best ways to store your garland is by wrapping it around a sheet of card board that is cut a bit smaller than a standard manila envelope. Wrap the garland around the cardboard as you wind it off the tree and then insert the wrapped board into the envelope for safe storage until next year.

Want to kick things up a notch and make this a full blown math lesson? If so check out this site. They are all about the Pi.