Upcycle Your Old Calendar Into A Beautiful Decoration

If you love paper calendars and are looking for cool ways to upcycle them after their dedicated year is over — you're in luck. There are many fun repurposing projects that capitalize on the visual beauty of calendars, particularly those with floral, landscape, and fine art themes. You can use calendar pages or covers, which are usually printed on glossy and thick card stock or paper, for a variety of paper-centric projects, like making them into bookmarks, decoupaging, and framing them as wall art. Instagram user @athomewithxin, however, has an ingenious idea to preserve your calendar as a three-dimensional ornament you can enjoy for many more years. All you need is the cardstock cover of your calendar, a cutting tool, and some plain white glue or Mod Podge to turn your old calendars into home decor.

While this DIY uses the cover, you could also use the interior pages if the paper is thick enough to hold its shape. Cut the page or pages you are using into 20 2-inch diameter circles. The fastest way to do this is to use a die-cut or vinyl cutting machine, like a Cricut machine, to cut identical circles all at once, but you could also trace them out and cut them manually with scissors or an X-acto blade.

Use another circular piece around the edges to form a triangle shape. You will use this piece as a template to shape your circular pieces, which you will fold up around the edges to make them more three-dimensional. Once you have shaped all the pieces, begin gluing them together. You will be making three different larger pieces from the circles. Two will be glued together around a center point, with another in a chain that you will wrap to create a circle. Once you have made the circle, add the top and bottom pieces with glue. As you glue the portions together, add a ribbon, twine, or wire for hanging sandwiched with glue between two pieces.

While this DIY makes a beautiful Christmas tree ornament at the end of the year, you can also use this same folding technique to make other creative Christmas decorations and seasonal décor for your home. Create a flat bottom with the cardstock and use the center portion and the top to create a small paper box perfect for holding small desk items. You can also add additional elements to the ornament with glue, like small pearls in the center of each circle.

The above project is just one of many creative paper folding projects you can make with old calendars for your home. For some fun floral ornaments, start with larger square pieces of paper and use more advanced origami folding techniques to create flower segments. Or cut the pages into squares and fold them into cones to cover a wreath form.