Jingle Belles - Peace on Earth (Day)

One of my favorite challenges from the Jingle Belles is the Earth Day challenge where you get to recycle items to make a card.  Of course, this might be in part due to the fact that I save things like old cards, wrapping paper, tissue boxes, pretty packaging and more hoping to one day give them a new life.  My card uses some recycled wrapping paper from a gift I received and some elements punched out from a Christmas card I've been saving for a few years because it was so pretty. 

The wrapping paper is what you see in red with those beautiful gold embossed polka dots. It feels handmade and most likely is specialty paper of some sort.  I just couldn't see balling it up for the trash and knew I would find a use for it again (even if it was to wrap a smaller gift, or is that too tacky?).

The little animal circles are what I punched from the card and I popped them up on dimensionals. I also recycled those green triangles from squares I had cut out many moons ago for these cards.

At the corners I added some unwound metallic red embroidery floss.  The card is on a red base that I wish I could have made bigger, but it's a 6" square I don't have any red paper larger than 12".  But now that I'm thinking about it a little more, I guess I could have made it an easel card and had the base little smaller.  Hmmmm.  There's still time for that before Christmas fortunately. 

There's gold embossing all around those little animals and the botanicals with them - I hope you can see that in the picture below.  I think you can see the shine of the gold circles for sure.

It's nice to put a dent in that pile of things to reuse, even if it's only a little one.  There is so much beauty in the things that we often throw away.  People make a living designing packaging and wrapping, and even when you think about it, the beauty in the cards that we, ourselves create and send forth into the world can be reused.  I don't think I'd have a problem with someone dismantling a card that I sent them and using it again as a whole or pieces of it.  

One of the things that really bothers me at work is when the librarian orders bookmarks.  Yes, they have catchy phrases for the students to encourage them to read, but they're not as inexpensive as one may think and they're so expendable.  Just thinking that maybe next year, for a 365 project, I'll do my mini scrap collages on strips to be used as bookmarks instead of the ovals I've been working on.  Maybe before I retire in a couple of years........

Okay, let me get off my soap box and get over to the Jingle Belles to see how the belles are celebrating Earth Day for Christmas.