Sustainable Christmas Crafts - Cardboard Decorations
At this time of year most of us have a pile of cardboard ready for recycling, so this quick and sustainable Christmas craft comes at the perfect time. Today I’m sharing a craft step by step, originally created for Hobbycraft, for Scandi-inspired cardboard Christmas decorations. These star and house shape decorations look great when threaded onto foraged branches - all you need is some cardboard, twine, a paint pen and a quiet afternoon complete with your favourite Christmas songs!
Sustainable Christmas Decorations | Materials
Cardboard - recycle anything from cardboard boxes to old cereal packs
Twine
White 3m Posca pen
Sustainable Christmas Decorations | How To
Before you begin, cut out star and house shapes from your cardboard.
For the stars…
Using your Posca pen add a scalloped line around the edge of your first star. This is made up of a continuous row of half moon shapes. Keep these a similar size to create a uniform pattern.
Now add a dot in the centre of your star and colour in before drawing 5 triangles that sit inside the scalloped edges of the stars. Don’t worry about these looking completely perfect or exact as long as you have similar sized triangles it will be fine.
Add petal shapes to the centre of the star and add dots using just the tip of the pen, working outwards towards the triangles to complete your first decoration.
For your second star design, create 5 lines working out from the centre of the star to the points of it. Try and keep the lines a similar length but it doesn’t have to be exact.
Add teardrop shapes along the lines creating symmetry by drawing and joining the foliage shapes at the exact same point along the lines. Add a teardrop shape at the top of each line to finish the foliage motif. Add a border around your foliage with lines and dots at each indent of the star.
For your next design draw a scalloped pattern border again, only this time colour it in so you have a white border. Add a small circle in the middle and add 4 half moons around it.
Now add 5 triangles pointing outwards to your star points and use the tip of the pen to create a simple dot pattern working outwards from the centre.
Your final design is made up of small seed head motifs. Create a central dot with a waved border, then draw a short line outwards from this into one tip of the star. Draw four lines spraying out from this with a circle drawn at the top. Repeat around the star so you have 5 in total. Then create a dot pattern working outwards between the seed heads, before colouring in the tips of the star.
For the Christmas houses…
The simple motifs used when decorating your star decorations can be repeated across the cardboard house shapes to make up the roof patterns mixing between scallops, dots, lines and foliage.
Add in windows and doors with simple coloured in shapes and then you can begin to add embellishments to the house if you wish, although they also look great with just fancy roofs and doors for a more minimalist Scandi look.
You can also bring your patterns down from the roofs and use to adorn the windows and doors
Create large motif style patterns that work around the roof shape rather than just straight across it using the simple motifs we used on the stars just in different scales on the roofs.
Finally use a single hole punch to punch a hole through your house shape and tie twine through so your decorations are ready to hang!
