You all know that I’m a sucker for recycling trash into a craft! So, here’s a Christmas version of a recycled craft. We are going to use an empty cardboard egg carton and cardboard boxes and turn them into adorable framed Christmas characters like Rudolph, Santa, an elf, a Christmas tree, and a snowman. Come along with us as we make this craft, it will be fun!
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Supplies Needed to Make Framed Christmas Characters
You can click on each of these supplies (except for the recycled material) to see our recommended products and purchase them, if you’d like.
- Empty cardboard egg carton
- Empty cardboard boxes
- Tempera paint – Check out this awesome set of tempera paint with a large variety of colors for such a great price.
- Paintbrushes
- Foam sheets – here’s a great variety pack with several different colors
- Scissors
- Hot glue gun – This cordless hot glue gun is awesome and work so well.
- Hot glue sticks
How to Make Framed Christmas Characters
1. First, use the scissors to cut the egg carton up into different sections. Use your imagination for this to cut off pieces that can be transformed into parts of the Christmas characters. So, the rounded parts that cupped the eggs can be used for round faces and beards and the pointed pieces in between the eggs can be used for trees and hats and reindeer snouts.
2. Once you’ve cut up all your pieces, paint them the desired color. We painted our reindeer brown, our Christmas tree green, our snowman white, etc.
3. While those are drying, you can start on your frames. For this you’ll cut the cardboard into rectangular or oval frames and paint them whatever color you’d like. We painted ours gold.
4. Then hot glue the frame onto the foam sheet to create the colored background of the picture frame.
5. Once you have your picture frames made, you can start hot glueing the pieces of the Christmas characters together. Check out the pictures below as I start to assemble each of our Christmas characters.
6. Then paint on each of the Christmas characters faces.
7. Then marvel at your awesome creation! Check out each of our Christmas characters below. We made Rudolph, Santa, an elf, a snowman, and a Christmas tree.
What other Christmas characters did you come up with to create? I’d love to hear your creative ideas!
If you enjoyed this craft, check out our other great Christmas crafts linked below!
