Recycled Christmas Card…Folded Circle Ornament

I'm back again with another recycled Christmas card project. Hope you're not tired of them yet! This one is sentimental for me though. My Portuguese grandmother, Avó, taught me how to make these when I was very young. It was probably over 40 years ago.

Folded Christmas Card Ornament…

Easy project you can make in so many different sizes.

Back to the card box again…

For this project, I highly recommend a circle paper punch. You can trace and cut them out by hand, but this is so much faster.

The circle punch I have is 2 inches across, but they do sell them in a variety of sizes.

You can punch these circles out randomly. You don't have to fussy cut the design. Just punch away!!

The construction of the ornament involves folding the edges of the circles with a triangle shape. The old way of doing it was to trace the triangle on the back of the circle card, score it, then fold it over.

My way is to use a plastic or cardboard template to fold the circles for gluing.

I made this one out of an old plastic notebook.

I use the clear plastic template, so I can see the circle underneath when I'm drawing the triangle inside to fit.

Place the plastic over the circle and draw an equilateral triangle to fit inside your circle size. I used a pencil for the numerous mistakes!

I kind of winged it to fit. It's a craft project, so don't stress.

You can trim a little as you go. It just needs to fit equally in the circle. Measure each side of the triangle, so they are approximately the same size.

The sides of mine are 1 1/2 inches on all 3 sides.

To start…

Place triangle template on the design side of the circle.

Bend one side over the template.

Fold over the next…

and finally the third.

Now take all your circles, your triangle template and grab a large cup of tea and start folding!!

For one ornament you will need 20 circles...5 for the top cap, 5 for the bottom cap and 10 for the strip in the middle.

This went faster than you'd think.

I ALWAYS use hot glue, because it's super fast to dry…seconds. Using hot glue, you can keep moving on without stopping.

Glue the flaps together with a spot of hot glue.

You only need a smidge on one side of the flap.

Pinch the 2 together.

Glue 5 together to make the top cap.

Folding isn't perfect, so the gluing won't be perfect. Just try to match the circle edges.

Make 2 caps of 5 circles each.

You will also need the middle strip.

Glue 10 circles across in one straight strip.

Close-up.

Now take the strip and form a circle.

Glue to form a ring.

Here's the ring.

The flat flaps of the cap will fit on the flaps of the ring.

Place the cap on top and glue each flap one at a time.

Here's the middle ring with the top cap on.

Now take the bottom and glue it on.

Done!!

This is a mix of all different cards, but you could do a theme by picture (all snowmen or santas) or by color.

You could leave it just like this and fill a big bowl or basket of them.

You can also make ornaments for your tree.

I used a tiny hole punch and added gold cording.

A whole tree filled with memories of Christmas past.

If you want a project for your little ones to put together, you can use 8-10 circles and make 2 caps of 4-5 circles and glue the 2 caps together and don't add the middle strip.

Here the difference between the 2 designs.

For the ornament on the right with the 8 circles total, I used the cap of a canning jar to trace.

When finished, the main ornament from this post, with the twenty 2 inch circles, is about the size of an orange. Adjust the circles smaller or larger for the final size you need.

This is such a great project to use up lots of cards and keep the memories for years to come.

Thanks for stopping by,
~Karen~