Recycle Cardboard Ribbon Spools into Christmas Ornaments

I always have quite a few spools of ribbon in my craft stash. Normally, I would toss the empty spools in the recycle bin but I found a really great use for them a few years ago. Christmas ornaments!

I started by taking one side of the cardboard off of the spool. The spools I use are from thin ribbons 1/4 inch wide or less.

To get all the excess paper bits and glue off, I sand it down lightly. Then I find an image to put inside the spool. The Graphics Fairy is always a great place to find vintage images and where I found this cute little snowman.

I made two of these ornaments and each one was a bit different although I used the snowman for both. Both spools were painted, one with red and cream, the other just cream colored.

I only painted the areas that would be showing. For the other areas, I used scrapbook paper to cover the cardboard.

Then I started adding a little decoration to the snowman to make him pop out. On one of the  snowmen, I added red glitter to all the red areas. The other one I added black stick on beads for his buttons.

I also added glitter glass to a different area on the outside of each spool.

To finish off the ornaments, I added a hanger with some ribbon and a piece of scrapbook paper to the back.

Done! I gave them as gifts on Thanksgiving one year to my family. I used old Christmas card images the last time I made them as another way of recycling. There are so many ways to do these, but I tend to go for more of a vintage look every time.

I haven’t tried any of the wider spools but I was thinking of making one with miniature trees in it, almost like a small shadow box. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas on how to use the empty ribbon spools?

 

 

I will be linking up to these parties.

I have also linked up to the 2016 Ornament Exchange Blog Hop.