Decorate Your Christmas Tree with Trash!

I like challenges, so one year, I decided to see if I could create tasteful, Christmas decorations out of trash. In this Instructable, I'll show how to make one of the ornaments. The directions for making this gingerbread house are easy to follow, and children as young as eight or nine can make these for your tree.

I think reusing and recycling materials are important in themselves, but with the economy going south, they can help save money, too. I'm an art teacher who has had to deal with budget cuts for a long time, so I've managed to come up with hundreds of ways to reuse items most people throw away.

The following is an Instructable for making a gingerbread house out of stuff you'd usually put out with the trash.

Step 1 Materials List for Gingerbread House

You will need:

*White, polystyrene trays
*Large cereal box
*Brown acrylic paint
*T-shirt paints for "icing"
*Paint brush and pan
*Scrap ribbon
*White glue
*Compass or awl
*Scissors
*Ruler
*Pencil

Comments

[DIYDragon]

What a totally cute Christmas house. : ) But what item are the poly trays from? I work at a grocery store, and I've not recalled seeing anything like them before. Are they packing materials from the freight?

[shortone]

wow you sure don't go to my highschool.. they serve our lunches in those things they're all over the town now because of it...it's disgusting and awful and wasteful :(

[freelife571]

haha,in our school you can find them shoved through the slots in peoples lockers sometimes,mostly left over on the floor ripped in shreds.

[zieak]

Aside from Trash Queen's suggestions for finding the poly trays - some places use foam like that for their take-out containers.

[Trash Queen]

Glad you like the house ornament. Some friends and I are making them to give to people who lost their ornaments in the June 2008 floods that caused tremendous damage here. The poly trays are the squishy, foamed type that you see at the grocery store. In my area, they put produce like grapes, baked goods, and meat on them, and then they're shrink wrapped. The ones here are white, yellow, and black, but I think they come in more colors. Foamed polystyrene is the same stuff used to make egg cartons, cups, plates, and take out cartons.

[weslen1]

Instead of cutting out the entire sections on the two sides of the roof, cut them into triangles. You won't have empty spaces when you assemble the house and the peak of the roof will match the tops of the triangles.