Recycled Tin Christmas Decorations

The children love to try their hand at many different crafts and this year we thought we would have a go at a recycling craft and some metal punching. The metal circles were cut from the bottom of the cardboard tubes containing snacks often eaten at this time of year, in fact I saved these ones from last year.

The photograph above shows the equipment we gathered together to make our decorations and the metal disc. You could use a hammer and large nail for this but as we had small children keen to try, my husband put together a child friendly tool for small hands. This comprises of an old knitting needle fixed into a handle. If you look closely at the metal disc you will see I have marked the central point for my design. We have drawn on all of the designs or punched free hand but if you want to you could stick on a pattern to copy.

You just line up your pointed tool or nail onto your line and hit it with a hammer... very simple. I have moved along the lines tapping and making a pattern, in this case a snowflake. Remember to have a spare piece of wood under your metal disc to stop you going right through and leaving holes in your table.

The children loved this craft especially being let loose with a hammer and it got rather noisy at the table. My daughter also added some letters to her disc with a letter punch set.

These are the finished decorations, we have added some string to hang them with. They are quite shiny and catch the light beautifully hanging on the Christmas tree. I might hang some of them in the garden in the spring to use them to scare the birds away from our peas as they reflect so well.

The patterns could be as simple or intricate as you choose, I think the children have managed to make some lovely decorations from recycling something that usually just gets thrown away.