The art of not buying Christmas cards

This week it's been time to write Christmas cards. So I've turned my attention to how to do this without buying any new cards, and trying to be as green as possible. Having thought about my approach, I realise it's a new interpretation of that well known phrase, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Reduce (but without shedding friends...)

Firstly, I have used email to send a Christmas letter where possible. A couple of years ago I experimented with doing this and asking friends for feedback - did they mind not having a Christmas card and getting a letter by email instead? The majority of my friends were happy with this approach, a few said they preferred a real letter, so I will post to a few, but most of my friends who live a way away have been emailed, or sent a letter via Facebook. One of the advantages of this was that I found quite a few of my friends emailed me back, with news of their year, so it was more interactive than just posting a card into the void.

Reuse (last year's leftovers)

Secondly I have used up Christmas cards from previous years. Every year I normally buy or make some, but there's always a few left over, so they get put back in the box with the Christmas decorations. This year, I dug them all out and used them - hopefully no-one will mind if I've accidentally used the same design for them two years running! Surprisingly, I had almost enough cards, but did run out before I'd finished so I had to turn my attention to the third option, which is making my own.

Recycle  (new cards from recycled materials)

I've always enjoyed making Christmas cards, but it can be quite time consuming, so I was trying to find a way of producing simply made but effective cards that didn't take too long to make. So I spent an hour armed with card and glue that I already had, last year's John Lewis Christmas catalogue and some John Lewis stickers that I bought last year. I experimented with a number of designs, in the end my favourite one involved cutting out a square of text talking about Christmas, sticking it onto coloured card, then finishing it off with a penguin sticker or a smaller image cut out of the Christmas catalogue. In an hour I had produced about 15 cards, and was really pleased with the results, plus I had a warm fuzzy 'I've been creative' feel. My only regret was that I hadn't made more of the cards myself, as I'd already written a last years card to a lot of my best friends and it would have been nice to give them a handmade one. Never mind, there's always next year!