Recycled CD Ornament

Technique:  Papercraft

Stamps:
Drew's Cupcake digi by Designed to Delight
Two Apples digi by Designed to Delight

Pens & Inks:
Reds:
Greens:
Denim Blue: B91, B93, B95
Sky Blue: B24, B26, B28
Flesh: E0000, E000, E02
Red: R22, R24, R27
Green: G03, G05, G07
Grey: C0, C3, C5, C7, C9
Bundled Sage Distress Ink
clear Spica Pen
glitter gel pens

Papers:
Waiting for Santa Collection by Webster's Pages

Other:
old CD
wide double sided tape
double sided foam adhesive
ribbon
Sparkly Fluff
Rock Candy Stickles

We have stacks and stacks of old compact discs lying about the place, quite literally in the hundreds I would guess, which predate the portable hard drives that now store all our data.  I have been itching to find a way to use one, this challenge was perfect :o)

Using the CD as a template, cut two circles from your designer paper.  I used the Waiting for Santa collection by Webster's Pages, the paper has ornaments with the alphabet and drawn lines giving a very school book type feel, and this is going to be an ornament for my son's teacher.

I used strip of double sided tape on each side of the CD to secure the ribbon into place, sorry for the terrible photo, I should have done the non reflective side first, but I wanted to show you how I secured the ribbon.

Once the ribbon was secure I covered one side with double sided tape and stuck the first circle of paper into position. 

The edges were trimmed with scissors, and then I took an emery board to the edges and lightly sanded to remove any overhang still remaining and smooth the edges.

Both sides of the CD are covered in the same way, then the edges inked with Bundled Sage distress ink.

One side of the ornament has the Drew with Cupcake digi sitting to one side, I've used sparkly fluff and glitter glue to make it look less like a birthday cupcake and a little more Christmas-y.  I haven't put on much in the way of embellishments, because the blank space you see there next to Drew, will be where my son writes a personal message to his teacher.

The other side of the ornament has a Christmas wreath made from apples (apple for the teacher).  I used Gimp to make the background on the apples digi transparent, and then used Word to fiddle about until I had a wreath shape I was happy with and then after printing and colouring, fussy cut it to make a photo frame.

The finishing touch is a double bow on each side, made from the same ribbon as was used to create the hanger, but a thinner version. 

Challenges:
Christmas Stamping All Year Long:  Teacher's Pet
ABC Christmas Challenge: R is for Recycled plus Ribbon or Rhinestone
Crafty Ribbons Challenge:  Christmas Cheer in September 
Papertake Weekly:  Anything Goes

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.