As the holidays begin to descend upon us, the tiny person and I are very seriously focused on learning about traditions, honoring our own and creating some new ones this year.

We’re also working hard at keeping with the whole idea of creating more and consuming less. And that has lead to great projects in the last few holiday seasons like handmade wrapping paper, homemade cookie cutter gift tags from scrapbook paper and handmade Christmas crackers. We even tried our hands at card making with sparkles.

This year, our first big holiday project is ornament making using old bottle caps and pasta sauce jar lids. For ages, I had been trying to figure out what to do with all of these lids I had floating around the house. Then it occurred to me that this would be a great way to reuse old cards, scrapbook paper that was literally a scrap and other goodies.

It is two quick tutorials. Here they go:

Bottle Cap Ornaments

Here’s what you need:

• A handful of bottle caps (if you haven’t been saving them, the wine making shops around town sell them),
• Old holiday cards or scrapbook paper (I found vintage pages of Christmas postage stamps at Scrapbook Central on 14th and Cliffe in Courtenay),
• Glue gun (parents only),
• Scissors,
• A small circle for tracing (I used a small essential oil bottle),
• A pencil, and
• String or other decorative ribbon for hanging.

Directions:

1. Prep your cards or scrapbook paper and cut them into circles that will fit in the bottle caps (this is where the little tracer and pencil are put to good use).

2. Get your bottle caps ready to go. Squirt some hot glue in the middle of the cap and stick the paper cutout inside.

3. Take your string or decorative ribbon and glue it to the back of the cap. Let dry and hang.

These sweet, delicate and absolutely lovely ornaments were so easy to make it almost made me cry. I really love the way they turned out and will be making a ton to tuck into packages this year.

Pasta Jar Lid Ornaments:

Here’s what you need:

• Washed and dried jar lids,
• Scrapbook paper or old holiday cards,
• Ribbon,
• Tinsel,
• A glue gun,
• Scissors, and
• A pencil.

Directions:

1. Gather your lids and find one that is just a bit smaller than the lid you are planning to turn into an ornament. Use the smaller lid as a tracer to make a cutout of scrapbook paper or old cards.

2. Glue the paper into the middle of the lid. Glue tinsel around the edge.

3. Glue a loop of ribbon onto the back of the lid to hang it with.

That’s it. Two super cute, super easy and really fun ways to reuse this holiday season, create something a bit magical and give Mother Nature the gift of a lighter footprint on the Earth.