Now that the holidays are wrapping up, decorations are being packed away and endless amounts of pine needles are being swept up. But what to do with that stack of greeting cards you received throughout the season? I hate to throw them away, but saving them just takes up space. I wanted to come up with a way to re-use them. And the solution? DIY Holiday Gift Tags, made from stacks of old Christmas cards!

These DIY Holiday Gift Tags are very simple to make, and they’re very kid-friendly. So, if you’ve got a house full of stir-crazy kids, grab a stack of cards and get started!

There’s a lot of versatility to this project as well, which I always like. I like to have options when I’m crafting 😉

I went through a stack of 2013 Christmas cards I’d saved and picked out a few that had neat patterns and scenes. Then I grabbed a pair of scissors, cookie cutters, ribbon and twine, and a hole punch and got to work.

I found that cards with all-over patterns are great for any shape. You can go with the traditional rectangular or circular shapes, or you could even raid your stash of holiday cookie cutters and use those to trace out stockings, trees and more!

Cards with larger scenes and images, or even photo cards, might require a bit more planning. Some of the photo cards we’d received had neat words and phrases on them, so I focused on capturing those. The “joy” tag above was the bottom corner of a photo card. If you don’t mind a more abstract look, you could just cut rectangles and circles out of the larger images, or you could “fussy cut” them to capture different characters or sections of the cards.

I’ve already started going through the cards we received this season to save some for next year’s gift tags. And I think this will become an annual post-Christmas tradition in our home!

You might also enjoy this gift-wrapping idea:

Cinnamon Stick Gift Toppers