DIY Christmas Card Placemats

This is a fantastic idea that my lovely Mom thought up back in the day! Take the front cover of Christmas cards and turn them into placemats to use throughout the holiday season every year.

What you'll need:
- 18 Christmas Cards (this will yield 1 dinner serving sized placemat)
- Colorful contact paper (we used red for Christmas)
- Clear contact paper
- Scissors
- Round object (like a bowl or mug) to make the shape you'll cut the cards out into
- Pencil (to mark the round edge onto the card)

What to do:
1. Cut the front cover off of cards so you have a nice flat surface to work with.
2. Place the round object around the surface of the card you wish to use and mark with pencil.
3. Cut out circles (18X)
4. Once circles have been cut, arrange them how you'd like!
5. Cut a piece of colorful contact paper that will fit your arrangement, peel off sticky layer, lay flat (sticky portion up) and stick card cutouts in your desired arrangement on top. *tip: don't stick and reinforce cutouts until you are satisfied with your arrangement (it's hard to pull off cutouts once they're stuck to contact paper).
6. Once you're done arranging, leave ends on contact paper (even though it looks messy). Then you can take the clear contact paper and press down over the top of the placement (over the card cutouts).
7. If you want, you can also place a layer of clear contact paper over the bottom colorful contact paper to reinforce.
8. When you're done, snip the excess contact paper as close to the card cutouts as you can keeping the shape.
9. And you're done!

Back View

                                             
This is a really simple and crafty idea that lasts a long time (we've used these for the holiday season for about 15 years and they're still in great shape)!

You don't even have to use these solely for Christmas...you can use cute stationary, cut in different shapes, and even use as singular coasters instead as a conglomeration placemat!

Happy Crafting!

Laura