This cardboard craft is a simple but adorable way to decorate for most holidays. It requires only a few supplies that almost everyone has on hand and is customizable to your needs. It’s great for preschoolers, an at-home project, a school craft, or can be made fancier for adults!
Check out our other activities to do with children here!
This is a cardboard craft without glue unless you want to use glue at the end. It’s completely adaptable to your needs. You can paint it, glue things onto it, color it, or leave it completely plain. As someone who has worked with kids of all ages, I think that this is an awesome craft to go in a classroom or Sunday school setting.
Supplies:
- Cardboard
- Scissors
- Cookie Cutters
One reason why this cardboard craft is great for holidays is because you can use cardboard from boxes that are coming in the mail and you can use the seasonal cookie cutters that you already have out! Shipping boxes are thick and more difficult to cut though. Keep that in mind if you want the toddlers to cut the shapes out. Other options would be the cardboard that is used at the bottom of gift bags and shoe boxes!
Optional:
- Tape
- String
- Glue
- Paint
- Coloring Supplies
- Beads
- Glitter
- Puff paint
How to Make An Easy Holiday Cardboard Craft:
First, decide which shapes you want. For Christmas, you can go with trees, gingerbread men, houses, stockings, whatever you have on hand. For fall holidays you can use pumpkins or leaves, and for Valentine’s Day hearts. The possibilities really are endless!
This is a great cardboard craft for kids because they can pick out the cookie cutter and then trace the cookie cutter onto the cardboard. Depending on their age, they can cut the cardboard too using child-safe scissors. If you’re uncomfortable with this, you can prep the cardboard cutouts ahead of time.
A couple of thoughts when it comes to cutting the cardboard:
Rounded edges are harder to cut. Keep that in mind when choosing the cookie cutters.
Smaller pieces of cardboard are easier to cut, so you may want to use the flaps of boxes or pre-rip/cut the cardboard into smaller pieces before tracing.
You could also use an exacto knife or box cutter to cut your traced-out shapes if you have a surface that you’re comfortable using.
The part that is primarily for the kids is the decorating. They can decorate their cutouts with markers, stickers, crayons, or paint. Children can do one each or multiple depending on your goal.
Assembly:
You can turn these cardboard cutouts into anything but here are a few ideas that we tried or thought of!
Glue or tape the cutouts back to back.
Create a garland using the cutouts, evenly spacing them along string and either taping them to the string or hole-punching a small spot to thread the string through on each cutout.
You can cut slits up a little more than half way from the bottom on one cut out, and a little more than half way from top of a matching cutout and stack two of the same together to create a 3D effect.
Small cutouts can be used as gift tags.
If you use a gingerbread house cookie cutter, you can glue the pieces together to have a non-perishable gingerbread house that can be decorated with additional items like beads!
These can also become ornaments.
Make them into magnets!
Turn it into a “cookie” decorating competition
Use these to decorate for Christmas on a Budget.
Minimalist variation:
Using puff paint, or Elmer’s glue tinted to the color of your choice, outline the cutouts as though they are cookies and use those as garland, tree decor, or placeholders on a table.
Let us know if this is a craft you would do with the kids in your life. We would love to see the results, so make sure to tag us on Instagram if you do!
Save it for later!
