Recycled Card Ornament

Techique Used: Papercraft

Materials:
old christmas cards
pva glue
pencil

Tools
scissors
hole punch
glass or jar that is approx 1.5" in diameter
letter opener

Using the glass or jar lid trace two circles onto one of the backing sides of the christmas cards to use as a template. One one of the circles draw an equilateral triangle. Believe it or not this is the hardest part of the whole craft! An equilateral triangle has sides of the same length and it's angles are 60 degrees. I used a small protractor to measure off the angles and cut the triangle, but you could also use a ruler and fiddle around until you found the exact measurement for each side for the side of circle that you drew. Once you have the triangle drawn, cut that out.

You should now have one circle template and one triangle template. Draw 8 circles onto the printed sides of the cards, if you are using cards that have people or scenes depicted on them rather than just patterns place the template carefully to ensure you get parts of the images that you find most pleasing. Cut out the circles, trying to follow the lines as closely as possible and avoid jagged edges.

Now place the triangle over each circle and line up carefully so that the points are all touching the edge of the circle and score the lines with a letter opener or something similar. This scoring provides the line for folding, you should now be able to fold up three 'flaps' on each circle. Do this for all eight. Working in pairs glue two edges together and allow a few minutes to dry. Glue two pair together, which will form the top and bottom, and let dry briefly before gluing the top and bottom sections together.

To hang, you can either use a hole punch as I did to make a hole for a hanging wire, or knot a piece of thin cord and place the knotted end of the loop between the two halves before gluing together.

You can make this ornament bigger by using more circles and having 5 across the top and bottom parts of the ornament, and ten across the middle band, for a total of 20 circles.