Tag: dollar store

Craft Projects, Dollar Store Crafts, Holiday, Valentine's Day

Hot Pink Valentine’s Day Boa Tree

Jessica Smith

Valentines Day Boa Tree

Need an inexpensive, cute Valentine’s Day decoration for the upcoming holiday? Why not make a Valentine’s Day tree!?

OK, I know trees are usually just for Christmas, but just follow along with this one because the end result is pretty darn cute.

Supplies:

  • 1-2 boas from the dollar store
  • 1 cereal box
  • Hot glue
  • Tape
  • Embellishments (ribbon, chain, etc.)

Step 1: Cut your cereal box down to one panel.

Valentines Day tree - box

Step 2: Fold your cereal box panel into a cone shape and tape the heck out of it so it keeps the shape. This becomes the base for your tree. You can’t see the tape through the boa, so feel free to use however much you need.

Valentines Day tree - cone

Step 3: Trim the edge of the cone to be flat. You will have a lot of excess from the cereal box, so it is OK to cut a lot off. Cut it to the size that you would like your tree. I only had one boa, so I made a small tree. If you have additional boas, your tree can be taller.

Step 4: Starting at the top of your tree, hot glue your boa to the cardboard. Boas usually have small finger holes at each end that are made of rope. I put this little ring around the top of the tree and glued that on first.

Valentines Day tree - glue

Step 5: Start winding down the tree with hot glue and boa. When you get to the bottom, cut a small slit into the bottom of the cardboard base and place the other knotted finger loop in the slot. Hot glue it in place to secure the boa on the tree.

Valentines Day tree - boa

Step 6: I stuffed the base of my cone so it was a little sturdier. To do so, I spiraled hot glue in the cone and put two crumpled up paper towels in the cone.

Step 7: Embellish. I added a silver chain, black ribbon and a black bow to my tree.

Valentines Day tree - bow

Step 8: Display in your house for everyone to see. Mine’s on our mantel right now and I love it. It looks half tree, half little pink monster hiding behind our wedding photos.

Valentines Day tree - mantel

Come Christmas time next year, I want to make several of these trees using white boas. I’ll probably make them in varying heights. How pretty would that be?

Happy friday and have a great weekend! Got any good plans for the holiday weekend? It’ll be visiting with family and lots of football at our house.

 

Christmas, Craft Projects, Dollar Store Crafts, Holiday, Quick and Easy Crafts

Red flower ball ornaments

Jessica Smith

My tree needs more red. It also needs more lights, but that’ll have to wait until next year. But as far as red goes, I can fix that now.

I bought 30 or so styrofoam balls at Granny’s Attic (an indoor yard sale benefiting Dana’s church) in November for only 50 cents! Total score! These things are inexplicably expensive at craft stores, so I was really excited to find such a bargain.

I grabbed a styrofoam ball and some red flowers from the Dollar Store and starting making a flower ball for my tree.

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First, I took a bead reamer and pierced a hole through the ball.

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Then, I threaded a button into some black wire and placed it through the hole in the ball. At the top, I twisted the wire and made it into a loop to hang from the tree.

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I picked a pretty button so even that part of my ornament would be fancy. Oh la la!

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Next I pulled the flowers off of the wire stems and hot glued them to the ball. This was tricky because hot glue melts styrofoam a tad bit, so I had to hold the flowers onto the ball for a while until they dried completely.

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As I added more and more flowers, the ornament took shape. To fill in any white spots, I glued red petals directly to the ball.

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When I was finished, I ran upstairs to hang it on our tree. It adds a nice pop of red to the tree without being terribly heavy.

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Love it! Now I just need to get more red flowers to create more. I had just the perfect amount to cover one ball.

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Craft Projects

Mason Jar Candle Holders

Jessica Smith

My friend Amanda made the hubby and me homemade jam for our housewarming party last month. We’ve devoured two of the three jams, so two mini mason jars have been floating around our kitchen for a while. Brian thinks the same jar keeps ending up in our dishwasher (which is hopefully getting fixed today after being broken for a week and a half *groans*), but then he realized we have two of them. So then he wanted to throw both away *gasp*. Crazy  husband, we can craft those!

So, that’s what I set out to do. I still have a ton of pages left from the dictionary I tore apart, so I decided to Mod Podge paper onto each jar and make them into candle holders. I combined several ideas I’d seen on Pinterest (cutting our a heart in the paper, covering vases with twine, Mod Podging ribbon) to make a cute set of tea light holders.

First, I cut out a strip of paper to wrap around my jars. Once it was cut to size, I folded it in half and cut a big heart out of the center.

Then, I slathered some Mod Podge on the jar and carefully placed the strip of paper on top of it. It was a little tricky to get it to lay flat, but after smoothing it out and moving it around a bit, it worked out.

I covered the whole jar again with Mod Podge, even the cutout portion of the heart. I chose to do this so the glass would have an etched effect. Plus, I bought battery operated tea lights from the dollar story so I didn’t want them to be so obviously fake.

I let this dry for a while, but not completely, before moving on to my next step. For the next part of my project, I cut out teal ribbon to strip the candle holder. To secure it to the jar, I simply painted a thicker layer of Mod Podge onto the spot I wanted the ribbon to stick. I smoothed the ribbon stripes out and let that dry, too.

To finish this project (and cover a few imperfections) I wrapped the bottom of the jars in twine and tied an accent piece of twine around the top of the jar. To secure the twine to the jar, I powered up my hot glue gun and placed little dabs of glue here and there. I wrapped the top with one single strand of twine, and the bottom with several layers of twine.

To top it off, I made a twine bow for each jar.

With one last dab of hot glue for the bow, my candle holders were left to dry overnight. The next day I placed a tea light in each one to see how they looked.

I think they turned out pretty darn cute. I’m not sure what the hubby will think when he finally notices them (he’s not a big fan of twine), but I think this was a fun way to reuse Amanda’s jam jars!

 

Did I mention Remmy stole a candle during my photo shoot? Darn dog…

Happy Tuesday!