Upcycled Valentine Garland | Family Economics

By Cathe

Here’s a fun way to upcycle colorful food and product boxes into sweet Valentine garland. Of course, you can make the garland for any occasion or as fun decoration for no particular occasion but for this post I pulled out packing with red and pink areas to create a garland for Valentine’s Day.

STEP 1:

Begin saving or collecting thin cardboard packaging from used products. Trim panels from boxes that have desired color areas and toss the remaining pieces in the recycling bin. If you find a package with colors you like but the stock is too thick to use, simply peel the top layer from the rest of the cardboard.

STEP 2:

Use shaped paper punches, decorative edge scissors or standard scissors to create various shapes from the cardboard.

STEP 3:

Sew your cut pieces together in random order on your sewing machine. I used pink thread on top and red thread on the bottom for a fun stitching effect. Sew piece-by-piece allowing several gap stitches between each. Make one long horizontal garland to swag or several small garlands to hang side by side vertically at the top of a doorway or from a chandelier fixture.

For other ideas on making garland from unusual objects, see my previous post here.

Start saving colorful sections of food and product packaging for upcycling projects. To save space, cut out only the sections that have good color, patterns or typography and store with your craft supplies.

What Valentine’s Day projects are you working on?