🎁 [Community Challenge] Festive & Upcycling – Turn Old into Festive! (Win a total of €100 in store credit)

Dear Community,

just in time for the start of Advent, we want to get festive – but sustainably! Our closets and drawers are often home to materials that are too good for the trash and are just waiting to shine in a new light.

That’s why the theme of our new campaign is: Festive & Upcycling!

Whether it’s Christmas decorations made from fabric scraps, gift wrap made from old newspapers, or festive clothing made from discarded pieces – show us how you magically turn something “old” into something wonderfully “festive.”

📅 Campaign period: November 30, 2025 to December 14, 2025, 11:59 p.m. (incl.)

🎁 Prizes

Among all valid entries, we will once again raffle off €100 in Crazypatterns shopping credit. The winners will be announced here in the forum.

We will determine the winners as follows (1:1 as in the last challenge):

• Community Choice: 3 × €20 = €60 / the 3 entries with the most likes win / cutoff date 12/14/2025, 11:59 p.m.
  
• Jury Picks: 2 × €10 = €20 / jury = Operator and Moderator
  
• Random Selection: 2 × €10 = €20 / 2 participating entries will be chosen at random
  

👉 Please remember: Feel free to share the challenge on your social media pages and point out the voting option for the Community Choice prize. Give your favorites here in the thread a “Like”!

✅ How to participate:

1. Post your entry here in the thread.
   
2. Use the template below and attach your own photos (multiple pictures are welcome).
   
3. Briefly tell us what you used (which “old” material) and what it became.
   
4. Multiple entries per person are very welcome!
   

📝 Template to copy

Motif / Title: ...
What was it before?
Material: ...
Short story (2–4 sentences): ...
Photos: (please attach)

💡 Inspiration

We’re looking for anything that spreads festive cheer and was created through upcycling:

• Christmas tree decorations made from old book pages, corks, or leftover yarn.
  
• Advent calendars made from toilet paper rolls or old socks.
  
• Festive table decorations made from jars (e.g., old jam jars as lanterns).
  
• Gift bags sewn from old shirts or jeans.
  
• Wintry door wreaths made from leftover materials.
  

🔎 Rules / Checklist

• Your own work & your own photos. No stock images or purely AI-generated images.
  
• Upcycling projects created earlier are okay if you present them here during the campaign period.
  
• No external/commercial links. (Mentioning inspiration without a link is okay.)
  
• Be friendly and follow netiquette.
  
• Entries with incomplete information or rule violations may be excluded.
  
• Prizes are non-transferable; cash payment is excluded.
  
• Legal recourse is excluded.
  

📣 Schedule & Notification

• Submission deadline: Sunday, December 14, 2025 (inclusive).
  
• Drawing & announcement: The winners will be announced here in the forum afterward.
  
• Notification: The winners will also receive an email about the credit.
  

We’re very excited to see what creative treasures you’ll conjure up from old materials. Let’s make the festive season green and creative!

Warm regards
Your Crazypatterns Team

P.S.
Previous challenge: DIY Gifts: Small & Personal & Winner announcement

Thank you very much, dear CP team, for the new challenge.
In a nutshell, the question for this challenge is probably, “Can festive and sustainable go hand in hand?” Let’s see what sparkling Christmas ideas we can come up with.

Title: Sustainable Christmas Ornaments with Sequins

About 25 years ago, I made these Christmas tree ornaments together with my children. They’re Styrofoam shapes into which you insert small, shiny sequins close together using short pins. The hangers are strings of beads threaded onto fishing line, which you attach with hot glue.

Even today, these sparkling little works of art still hang on our Christmas tree. They’re just as beautiful as they were on the first day and remind us every year of the time we spent crafting together in the run-up to Christmas. You can’t buy something this beautiful—you have to make it yourself!

   

I’m sure some of you are familiar with this. Your sewing box is overflowing with buttons you don’t need, or where there’s only a single one left. So what to do with them?
It’s simple: make brooches.
To do this, glue several buttons of the same size together in a circle, place one or two on top of each other in the middle, and decorate the whole thing with beads. Glue a brooch pin to the back, and you’ve got a unique piece of jewelry.

Motif / Title: Cutlery pouches for Christmas dinner

What was it before? The back pockets from a pair of jeans and stained Christmas tablecloths

At family gatherings, I like to add something homemade to the place settings, which the guests (usually the ladies and my grandson) then want to take home with them.

Photos: 

Leftover yarn made festive

For this cozy Advent wreath, I first made lots of pompoms from leftover yarn in various shades of green. These are attached to a Styrofoam half-ring with long pins. As decoration, I glued on small red Christmas baubles with a hot glue gun. You can lay the wreath flat, stand it up, or hang it. Every year it finds a lovely spot where it can be admired. Its advantage is that it doesn’t shed needles, and you can use it again every year.

Anyone who would like to make it can find the pattern in my blog.

  

Theme / Title: Advent calendar for dogs

What was it before? Toilet paper rolls
Materials: Cardboard rolls filled with treats, the ends folded over, stickers with numbers, and decorated with ribbon collected from an existing box.

The highlight for my dogs is, of course, being allowed to unwrap and shred the rolls themselves 😃

Mine spit out any little pieces of cardboard on their own, but still be careful and don’t leave dogs unsupervised with the rolls.


 

Hand-sewn St. Nicholas boots

What were they before? Old jeans, table linens and bedding, leftover yarn

Materials: Yarn and fabric

I love giving homemade gifts, and I love upcycling. And since we only give small gifts for St. Nicholas Day, that’s how I came up with the idea for the boots. 

Table Lanterns

We made table lanterns with the kids at school using old mason jars.

Spread paste on the bottom of the jar, add sugar, and swirl it around.
Draw stars on the outside with paste and sprinkle with glitter or sugar.

Add a string of lights and enjoy ✨⭐️💫✨

I made the star out of my collected paper towel rolls. It’s a lot of fun, and this definitely won’t be the only one.

Tealight Decorations Made from Dessert Glasses

This year’s table decorations are made from dessert glasses that I always save. This year, they’re decorated with a pink satin ribbon topped with a green velvet ribbon featuring the words “Merry Christmas” and a gold bow.
Guests are welcome to take them home. 



  
 

Decorative Flowers Made from Packing Paper

I made decorative flowers from brown packing paper.

Here’s how:
First, punch out lots of circles—these will become the petals later. Crumple them, soak them, iron them, crumple them again, color them, and iron them again. Then thread the petals, offset from one another, onto a paper fastener. Now shape the petals and add a little glitter from a tube to the edges. You can place the decorative flowers on a gift or use them as table decorations.

The first image shows the making process in rough steps, and the second shows the finished result. The detailed pattern is on my blog.

Motif / Title:
Weatherproof Christmas Trees

What was it before?
An old Christmas tablecloth, shredded fabric scraps for stuffing, wooden stars from an old arrangement, and curtain rods.

Short story:
I actually wanted to sew two fir trees out of an old tablecloth with a hole in it—but the fabric was already so brittle that it tore while I was stuffing it.
I then coated the trees several times with concrete, placed them on old curtain rods, and attached wooden stars to the tops. Finally, a little paint—and the unplanned balcony decoration was finished.

Photos:





Not as planned, but I think they’re pretty.

Sustainable Advent wreath with greenery from the garden and recycled glass

We always make our own Advent wreaths. One year, I incorporated 4 empty mustard jars . You can paint them, decorate them using decoupage, or cover them with shrink wrap. I went with the latter. 
 

I gathered the greenery for my Advent wreath from my garden and my neighbor’s. You need small sprigs of various types of fir greenery so the wreath doesn’t look too monotonous—as is often the case with store-bought wreaths.

I inserted the sprigs into a reusable insert system from Velou. This has the advantage that you can water the greenery, and it doesn’t lose its needles as quickly.


I placed the mustard jars on the candle holders and then decorated the wreath. I put a tea light in each mustard jar. For decoration, I used faded, dried hydrangea blooms from my garden and pinecones I’d collected on walks. I also added a few shiny little balls from my Christmas stash.
    

Are there any other great posts you’d like to share here?
Remember to like your favorite posts for the Community Choice Awards and share the link to this thread. 

 Motif / Title: Rescued from everyday life—and transformed for Christmas ✨🎄

What was it before? A simple, empty applesauce jar that almost ended up in the glass recycling.

Material :

• Empty jar (e.g., applesauce jar)
  
• A crocheted Christmas-themed cover (cotton in red, yellow, and black, and white chenille)
  
• Small wooden clips
  
• Fir branches
  
• Small candies to attach
  

Short story (2–4 sentences): My kids love surprises—and especially those little magical moments in December. So I turned a simple applesauce jar into a little Christmas joy tree that brings smiles to my kids’ faces on St. Nicholas Day. The candies are picked off one by one, like little treasures on a fir branch. A quick upcycling project that instantly spreads a warm Christmas spirit.

Photo: 

Are you feeling the Christmas rush right now?

Please remember that the current community challenge runs until December 14. If you’d like to showcase more projects, now’s the time. Keep having fun. Please also remember to like your favorite posts and share this thread with your crafting friends. 

Dear community,

the winners have been announced in the following thread. Thank you very much for participating!

👉 Go to the thread

Best regards,
Your Crazypatterns Team