More upcycling - a birthday card

I've been wanting to try this for a while - and finally got

A Round Tuit!!

Our recycle bin each week has LOTS of cardboard in it - lots of packaging. And while it's great that it all gets recycled - reusing things is a step up from that - uses no energy (except my own) and if I can make something useful, so much the better.

I always make gifts for my daughter's friends when they have a birthday, and my girls make them cards.  But this time, I've got in ahead of them and made the card too!

We had an empty cardboard box destined for recycling.

Fabric scraps left over from making the gift itself:

I cut a rectangle of card, and fabric about the same size.

Then simply stitched it on around the edges of the card, using an old denim needle on my machine.  The fabric was stretchy, so I had to trim it a little when I was finished. I used pinking shears to stop the edges fraying.

Then I hand stitched along one edge of a strip of the denim scrap, and pulled it into a kind of flower. Stitched a button in the middle and then stitched it to the centre of the front of the card. Finally I snipped the flower into 'petals'.

The inside is blank so my daughter can write her own birthday message to her friend in it.

So now her gift and her card are all matching!

Now we just have to decide how to wrap it....

I think I might make some more birthday cards from card from our recycle bin and fabric scraps!

What do you think?

Jill