Every year, millions and millions of greeting cards online as well as offline are sent out on occasions like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions. Greeting cards mark every important event such as the birth of a child or an expression of sympathy for the loss of a loved one. With millions of cards being purchased every year, there is a lot of unnecessary waste created and later dumped once the recipients decide these cards no longer need to be displayed in their homes.
The one time purpose of greeting cards seems utterly wasteful. New cards made with raw materials would have to be produced for the ever growing need of card gifting all year round. There is a better way to deal with this problem. You can start a venture of reusing, recycling and repurposing old greeting cards to create new versatile projects which will make your home look great or brighten up the day of a dear loved one. All you need is a little imagination and some time to spend on doing your projects. And, to further assist you with some quirky ideas that you can use for your nifty craft projects, read on!
Create new greeting cards
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” — Mary Lou Cook
There is no limit to what you can do in terms of repurposing an old greeting card into a new one with a pinch of creativity. Keep your mind open to new interesting ideas and if needed be, you can cut off certain elements from the old greeting card and attach it to the new homemade one that you are creating.
Here is another creative idea that might come in handy – use the old greeting cards and their framework to create a new one! Utilise the creative talent that you have and get on with your crafts project of creating new greetings cards.
Create children’s craft projects
Scrapbooking is another area where old greeting cards can come in handy. Cut outs and embellishments of certain sorts can always be repurposed. You can put your old cards to good use if you have children who like to colour and use safety scissors. This is a great way for kids to express their creativity and artistic abilities. As long as you are monitoring your children or working alongside them. Supervising children when they are using scissors, this is a safe, fun project.
Scrapbooking
Some greeting cards have such beautiful pictures or poetry that they are hard to throw away. However, they do take up a lot of valuable storage space. Use those pictures and text in your scrapbook. Choose a picture or quote that matches a page in your scrapbook and attach it to that page. You can then embellish the page even further with dye, cutouts, stickers, pictures, and other items.
Donate your cards
Donating old cards is a great way to raise funds. Many people choose to donate their slightly older greeting cards to old age homes, orphanages and many other institutions. Raising money through recycled and repurposed cards through nifty creative crafts is a great idea too. Children and adults can both get together and raise funding through craft contributions.
Create your own stationery
You can create note cards by cutting out pictures from your old greeting cards and glueing them on to small pieces of sturdy cardstock. Paper covers, stationary assortment files, pen and pencil holders, the possibilities are endless! Browse online to find more creative ways to utilise the old and used greeting cards. Pinterest, youtube, facebook, etc. are very rich sources of inspiration for craft projects.
Of course there can be many creative art projects that can be ventured through used greeting cards, but the demand for new fresh greeting cards does not compensate for the eco-friendly steps that you undertake. The best option to stop unwanted resource wastage is through online card gifting. Shift from the traditional hard copy greeting cards to a soft online greeting card version for a green movement.
