5 under 5$ Fall Tiered Tray Crafts / Miniature Step ladder and DollarTree Apple Cider Stand

Hello my crafty tribe this is Artsy Maddie and let's get creative. So today I'm going to walk you through making this adorable little miniature step ladder. So we're going to be using these medium size popsicle sticks from the Dollar Tree. You get 60 in a pack and one pack is plenty. So see there's a little tiny popsicle stick up above that's the regular ones so you want the ones that are just a bit bigger like this. So I'm going to cut one of them in half and then I've cut the rounded parts off as well so I've just cut them down so there's no more rounded ends and then just to give this strength I'm using wood glue and then just lining it up so that the seams aren't the same like so the seams are alternating just to give it strength and I'm using a bunch of clips to let them dry together so they don't warp or come apart. If you don't have clips like this though just wrap some painter's tape around it just to hold it in place while it's drying and the wood glue gives it so much strength it's totally worth it. Much more strength than hot glue. So the trick the secret to this ladder is 30 degrees as well. If you watched my last video the secret to hexagons that was 30 degrees and funny enough the secret to the ladder is 30 degrees as well so I printed an image of a 30 degree angle to use as my template and then for this part I had to use hot glue just because I needed it to dry perfectly at 30 degrees. Now this part's important so you need this to be opposite so see how the one on the left the piece on the right is on top and then this one on the right the piece on the left is on top so it's important that it's a set of opposites so just pay attention when you're gluing these together so you want a pair of opposites so that when you put them together like two sides will be inner and two sides will be outer if that makes sense just like how a stepladder is built. So then for the bottom I'm just going to square it up so that it'll sit flush with the table like just sit flat on the bottom so just run a ruler or a straight edge along that and then go from the shortest edge to the shortest edge and then I'm just using a pair of the little pruning shears from Dollar Tree but these popsicle sticks are actually quite thin so even when they're doubled if you just had a really strong pair of scissors that would work as well or if you've treated yourself to a pair of those miter shears those are going to work great I would assume I'll have to treat myself to a pair one of these days but for now I'm just using these cheap little pruning shears from Dollar Tree and they work okay for this. So then I'm just testing them out here making sure that they line up together and they do so now we need a straight edge at the top as well so I am using a sheet of just regular printer paper and then the width of my ruler and then just marking a straight edge across and then same thing with the other one so using that sheet of paper the width of my ruler and then a line straight across and then because this was four thick four thicknesses of popsicle stick I actually just took them out to the garage and chopped them on my chop saw you could do this probably for sure with the miter shears maybe with the scissors I just didn't want it to get too splintery and be too tough so I did use the chop saw for that part now for this part here I'm just going to be cutting the little steps for the step ladder so all the little rungs that you step on so what I did again is just cutting off those rounded parts on the end and then getting two pieces out of the popsicle stick and then I'm going to double these up as well so I forgot to hit record or whatever on that part but I've just doubled them up with wood glue and some little binder clips to hold them again if you don't have clips then just go ahead and wrap some painters tape around it so I clipped my two ladder pieces together before I used the chop saw just to make sure that they lined up evenly so that's just another little tip as well so then we just need some apple barrels some little um what do you call them apple barrel I guess basket apple basket that's the word I'm looking for so I just kind of experimented with some bottle caps and coffee stir sticks so one of the coffee stir sticks is from dollarama the other one is from dollar tree I can't remember which is which but they both look cute and I had some good results so either way for this one here I'm using a little bit of a smaller bottle cap on the bottom and then just a milk cap on the top that's a little bit wider so it it gave it kind of a fluted basket like so it's a little bit wider at the top it's barely noticeable but if you're into details like that maybe just use a little bit of a smaller bottle cap on the bottom so then I just cut quarter inch strips of some thin just cereal box cardboard to wrap around the apple baskets and just take your time you want to hold down the hot glue because it will want to not stay down the one of these one of the coffee stir sticks has a little tiny bit of a waxy feel to it this one that I'm working with here in my hands but I can't remember if that's the dollarama one or the dollar tree one but whichever it does work you just have to hold it down and be patient so then once I had the top cut on these ladder rungs I used this um t square or square from dollar tree so it's that width it's about an inch and a half that I put between each step so if you just find something like a little bit wider than a regular ruler and then you want to just mark each step and then once I had done that I just kind of lined them up to make sure that I had done it right and they were all going to line up evenly so you'll see here I just adjusted them just a tiny bit because the last couple rungs were just off just a tiny bit so just make sure to do this step so you just want to line them up side by side once you have them marked out sorry I'm trying to go a little bit slower just for anybody that's going to recreate these because I'm hoping that you will they're fairly simple crafts so I just wanted to walk you through step by step and just so they're really doable and easy for you guys so here I'm just double checking that they all lined up okay so just be sure to take the time to do that now I experimented a bit with this this seemed to be the easiest although it is still a little bit finicky but definitely worthwhile using the wood glue because it does give you so much strength once they're dry so I just used about three quarters of wood glue and then at the very end I just put a little dot of hot glue just to hold it while I was working with it so the hot glue will dry and then you're able to work with it a little bit so basically these first few are tricky until you get your ladder a little bit more stable so you just have to have a little bit of patience with the first few steps so I know it's hard to see under my finger there but again I'm just doing the same thing so about three quarters inch of wood glue and then a little dot of hot glue and I actually work just above the line so I would set the wood like above the line so make sure that you're just doing the same whatever it is if you go under over straight dead on the line just make sure you're doing the same thing so I get this side done and then I just leave it to dry for a couple hours until that wood glue is dry so it's still pretty warm here it didn't take long at all I think it was just two hours and everything was really solid and and had a lot more strength to it so now on this other side the rungs the ladder legs or or legs I guess you would call them so it's a little bit narrower on this side so you're gonna have to cut down your pieces to be a little bit smaller but make sure that you put this together before you do that just so you're sure of your measurement so that's what I did I waited till it was put together dried on the other side and then I cut down the pieces for this side so it'll just be like a little hair that you're just cutting off with your strong scissors or or shears or whatever you have and then I just did the same thing just that wood glue for most of it and then if you need to you can always run a bead of hot glue underneath the rungs as well just to give it strength and hold it and then for the top you just need a piece so I had glued another popsicle stick just the full length doubled because everything on this ladder is doubled because those popsicle sticks are so thin and then I just cut one that's a little bit longer than all of them just to be that top step on your step ladder and then you just let it dry just lots of drying with this craft it took a bit of patience but it's really strong now with all that wood glue it is gonna hold up to packing it away and all that so I'm happy with it so now for these little buckets I thought I'd show you a few different ways of putting handles on them so for this one with the rounded tops I just cut two little stubby pieces like about an inch high each and then glued them directly opposite each other on the basket and then I have this tiny little dowel here and I'm just going to cut it exactly the width to fit inside those two little pieces so this one would be like a wooden dowel handle and then again I just gave it a quick sand and some wood glue for that as well always good to have baby wipes on hand for all the excess glue so I had these skewers they're just like shish kebab skewers soaking in some water for a couple hours just to make it nice and pliable and it worked out great so then I was able to just bend it to fit inside this little apple basket and again I just used some wood glue and then after it was drying I kind of didn't trust the wet wood glue to hold it so I just did put a little piece of painter's tape over the whole basket just to hold them down as they were drying and then for the third basket I decided to try something different again so I just did a little tiny piece of twine knot at each end and then cut it off flush and then just glued them down to the basket so there's your three different handle options whichever one you think is cutest and then for a stain I just mixed together a little bit of burnt umber with a little bit of caramel tan and kind of made this nutmeg sort of color kind of an in-between and then I just watered it down so a bunch of water with it covered the whole thing and then just kind of did it like a stain and then I just wiped off the excess so just get it under all those little crevices kind of tricky so then here just going in with a little bit of a baby wipe and just getting any of the excess faux stain off of it and then same thing for the little containers so on all the little apple baskets I just went through with the faux stain again and it kind of blended in that cardboard and just made it all cohesive and go together and it all looks like wood so same thing just giving it a quick wipe so then once the stain was dry I just gave the latter a quick sand just to kind of make it look old and worn so just around the edges and where you would be stepping on the edges so just quick sand and then to kind of give it a patina and kind of make it look aged and a little bit dirty I just went through with a little bit of a gray wash so gray mixed with a little bit of water put it on let it settle in the little grooves and stuff and where there would be you know lots of footing on the step ladder just kind of letting it sit on there and then just giving that a quick wipe down as well so then I was lucky enough to find a couple of these strands of wooden beads at Dollar Tree I couldn't believe it I should have bought a lottery ticket that day but um I wish they were a little bit bigger but I'm not going to complain I'm just so happy that they're selling wood beads I hope they bring in lots more for every season hopefully we can all get some so these are going to be my apples so I just have this leaf green color with a little bit of water in a plastic bag just getting them all coated with it so kind of like a thick and then to help them dry I just put them onto um those shish kebab skewers the little wooden skewer things and kind of spread them out and then laid them over this styrofoam tray to dry so again it was still hot they dried pretty quickly and then I was thinking I was going to give them stems and that I was going to use the skewer to be the stem but as I was doing it I just thought this is so much work and they're kind of too thick anyway to be the stem so I kind of just gave up on that idea I did a few of them so a couple of them have stems but the rest are not going to have stems I just filled in the holes with a little bit of the polyfilla stuff and waited for them to dry and then just watered down a little bit more of the green leaf color paint and then just touched up all the edges a little bit finicky you can see why I had all that paint in my nails it was a busy couple days of painting so what do you guys think are you guys team green apple or team red apple I like them both I couldn't decide that's why some of my projects have some green and red I do like the sourness of the green apples though they might be a little bit leaning towards my favorite so here is the adorable little ladder all finished up I hope you guys love it I hope some of you recreate it it wasn't too bad not too hard and it's less than a dollar to make a cute little step ladder so today's video is part of the five under five challenge I love this it's fifth of the month at 5 p.m eastern standard time and it's always hosted by the queens of farmhouse so missy from crafty cove diy and emily from farm charm chic and our guest host this month is brenda from rustic and lace diy and she loves farmhouse as well so if you love farmhouse these are the girls to check out I will have their channel links in my description as well as the playlist full of fall tiered tray ideas so this one is going to be quick these are the little squirrel salt and pepper shakers from dollar tree and I'm just going to cover up the holes just so they're not so jump out that they're salt and pepper shaker so I'm just going to show you how how to camouflage that a little bit so you just start by filling the hole with some polyfilla and it doesn't have to be perfect I actually just wipe them down so that I wouldn't even have to sand if you really want them flush and really want them camouflaged you could do like a little build up of the polyfilla and then sand it down smooth but I wasn't too worried I'm just doing a quick little fill in here so once that was dry I just went in with a little bit of burnt umber to help them blend in and then once the burnt umber is dry then you can go over it with a little touch of gloss mod podge and that'll make them shiny like the squirrels are so it'll just help it blend in even more so depending if this bothers you or not it's just a quick little fix and then even under the bright bright lights that I have for the um showcasing stuff you can hardly even notice it so just a quick little fix for those cute little they have a owl set as well as a pumpkin set they're pretty cute so then this um cute little wooden light it has like a little nightlight kind of thing inside of it just a tiny little led so I'm just going to give it kind of a wash to make it look like an apple so I'm going in with that leaf green a deep red and a little bit of a creamy linen color and just don't overthink it so you're just gonna wet down your paint and use it like a faux watercolor and you just want to be like loosey-goosey with your brush don't overthink it don't let the colors get muddy you just want to hit some parts with the green some parts with the red and not let them mix too much that's kind of the the gist of it and then I just wanted to cover it in just so you're not seeing all that plastic and the way that the that little nightlight is in there so I just used regular popsicle sticks for this and I cut them all down to the width of this little nightlight thing so I just took my time with those little pruning shears from Dollar Tree cut them all down and then I couldn't decide I was kind of in between the wood glue and the hot glue so if I had made it a little bit too short I used hot glue and if it fit just fine then I used wood glue because it would kind of hold itself in there tightly and then I decided that looking through the words you can kind of still see that plastic nightlight thing so to kind of disguise it a bit I'm going to use this coffee filter and this takes a little bit of patience so just take your time and do a rough outline first get that cut down and then I just held it up like to the actual nightlight and then there's those little pieces of wood in there holding it together so you just have to trim down just below those but you still want it to cover the letters so you just have to be a little bit cautious and take your time and get it to fit just right and then once it does I just slipped it right in there and I'm just going to tack it in a few spots with hot glue just on the edges just to hold it in place and hold it up against the front of the wood so you guys don't have to tell me do you think this is a worthwhile thing or any of you gonna try this out I know they've been selling these for a few years at Dollar Tree and I love them I love that they're wood and the nightlights but I I don't like that they're open like I don't like that you see through everything so I thought this was kind of a good solution to to make them look enclosed and complete so then just carrying on with that watercolor treatment and just trying to line up the colors that I have like where I have the green and where I have the red and again just being kind of loosey-goosey with the brush not overthinking it lots of water and then once you have your colors just stop don't let your colors get muddy on you so don't mix them together too much and then you're done and there it is lit up pretty cute so for the stem of the apple I'm actually going to use the bottom of a floral pick that was pretty big so it was kind of substantial it was a little bit hard to cut through um the good thing was it left a few little wires on the end and I'm actually going to tuck those wires down in between the popsicle sticks and it'll give it a little bit more strength but it was a little bit tough to cut so there I am just poking those little wires down in there and then I'm just going to glue a full leaf that I had on hand just from some florals and that is it turned it into a cute little apple let me know what you guys think of it and would you go to the trouble of closing it in or is that just too much work what do you guys think and then we're going to make the cute little apple cider stand so I found these recently at Dollar Tree these little corrugated metal sheets um galvanized metal sheet and it is fairly flimsy and a little bit warped um but it wasn't too hard to cut so I used some tin snips just because I had them but I think you could actually cut through these with those same pruning shears or just some really strong scissors like it it is quite thin so then to try and make it more stable I wanted to just reinforce it with some popsicle sticks um I didn't trust my hot glue to actually bond really well to the metal though so I ended up just using this Dollar Tree fix all but it did take overnight to dry so just a heads up that there is a lot of drying and patience involved with these crafts but definitely worthwhile so once this dried with the fix all it was really on there and it feels really secure so then I thought I was going to be using two of these crates so you'll see me preparing two of them but I actually only end up using one so again I'm just mixing up that nutmeg color stain using the burnt umber and the caramel tan mixed together with lots of water and then just getting it all over the crates and then just wipe away the excess so same thing once this was dry I just did the popsicle sticks and then I have four dowels as well so just these thin little dowels I can't remember if those come from Dollar Tree or Dollarama but I'm sure you'll be able to find some um if not like at Michael's or Hobby Lobby if you had to but I'm pretty sure Dollar Tree sells little dowels as well so then I cut down four regular popsicle sticks and that's just going to help me reinforce the roof so you'll see what I mean when we get to that point but I'm just going to stain them all so that they all blend in well when I put everything together so here I am fooling around with the two and I made it really really tall and I just kind of realized it was too much so I decided to just use the one crate turned on its side and then I will cut down the dowels to be a little shorter when we get to that point so I'm just using a combination of wood glue and hot glue and the wood glue really is worth it because this feels really stable as well now that it's all dry so if you have some wood glue definitely worthwhile if you have the patience for letting it dry so just putting all of those dowels down in place and then I just had to cut about two inches off of each one just to cut them down for the roof so then I'm just going to tack the roof into place with some hot glue but I'll be reinforcing them with those popsicle sticks so this is just to hold it in place while I'm doing that and then the funny part is it didn't even hold in place it kind of let go on me I just needed it to hold for like one minute and it couldn't even do that so definitely worthwhile to reinforce it so I'm just going in with some wood glue and getting some down on those popsicle sticks so I know once this dries then it's really secure I'm thinking this little stand will be cute I can change it up for different seasons and stuff so you guys probably saw this too this is just that hot apple cider sign from Dollar Tree and I took a picture of it and just printed it small so that I could use it as the sign on my little stand here and so I'm just mounting it to some cereal box cardboard and I'm not really sure why but I made it double-sided you don't need to do that you can just make it single-sided and then I just did some searches for apple signs I like to do that when I'm like doing a particular craft I always like to look up like free printables for apples or apple signs and just kind of see what's available I'm also going to be making a garland so this is a little stencil for a garland so I just created these diamond shapes and I'm just doubling it up so it's nice and strong because I'll probably use it in the future too so just getting a nice even diamond shape and then this is just showing you a quick way to cut cut a whole bunch of the Madison scrapbook paper so I scored some lines that were the width of the diamond and then just butted them all up against each other and then I'm going to be cutting out four rows at a time so just a little trick if you're trying to create a whole bunch of little mini bunting so I'll just show you a few here so just cutting through the four pages easily of the scrapbook paper and then once you've folded them a few times they're almost falling apart anyway so they're just you just cut along the line really easily and then you have a whole bunch of diamonds really quickly and then I'm just going to be folding them over over top of the twine to make into little triangles and then they're going to alternate with little rectangles so then I was just using the width of the popsicle stick and using the popsicle stick to actually fold it in half just to make a whole bunch of rectangles as well so I marked out how much twine I need to go under the little apple cider stand and then I'm just going alternate gluing the little rectangles and the little triangle bunting and I just used hot glue just because it's quick and holds it holds it in place while you're working a little bit messy though but it's always so handy when things can dry quickly so I actually did a whole bunch of this bunting just to have kind of in my little vignette here with my tiered tray and my other projects but I'll just show you this tiny bit here for the for the little apple cider stand so then I glued some twine as well to the sign for the stand and then I'm just going to tie it onto the front of the stand just using the hot part of my glue to melt any of the excess glue that I had on there so this was one of the signs that I found when I was just doing that apple sign search and I just thought it was too cute too so I made a couple of those just mounted them to cardboard I only show one with the stand but I just made an extra just in case I don't know how I'll display things in the future so so there it is just tied to the front of the little stand and here it is and I'll show you I got a whole bunch of this really sweet little miniature copper at the thrift store and it had been passed up for quite a few weeks because when you get something with a certain color tag that's half price I think it means it's been there for a couple months so I was really happy that people passed those up for a couple months and then here's another cute little find this little miniature chalkboard sign and just another one of the little preview pictures that I found doing a google search for a little hot apple cider stand I think it's actually for a huge chalkboard poster I just think it's so pretty I might have to order one of those one day and then I just put it on this sweet little truck I found this truck at Walmart recently and it was only $16 and I had been trying to figure out how to make a bigger truck that I could change out seasonally and but then this one came and it was $16 and I thought I can't make it for that so I was really happy to pick that up then I'm just going to transform these sweet little dollhouse chairs from Dollar Tree I'm just going to turn them into kind of a farmhouse look so I painted them black and then I'm just going to give them a really light cute dry brushing just with the caramel tan color just on the edges you know just where it looks like the paint wore off and there's no more black paint left on it and then here's those little bags so I think I got them for a dollar yeah a dollar and a dollar fifty for all these sweet little copper pots I just thought they were so cute and so perfect for this project so I'm going to have them displayed on the tiered tray with everything too so then I found another printable on this website a blog called paint me pink it's a beautiful blog lots to browse through and she has this free printable for you pick apples five cents and fresh apple pies I just thought it was adorable so I'm going to have that in the background of my little vignette as well and I'll have the link to that in my description box too and then I found this little um sweet little wheat kind of tin planter thing that I thought was cute and I thought it would look cute with that black truck and then I just filled it with some of these little greenery bouquets from Dollar Tree that I found over the summer so I just trimmed them down a little bit and put them into a pool noodle just kind of quickly got them all evenly in there it didn't take too much arranging so now I have to decide it so I have this as one of the options and then I also went out and cut some what I think is bergamot I don't know for sure that it's bergamot but I just let it dry I thought it was really pretty with the yellow flowers so this is my other option although this is kind of triggering my asthma a little bit so I the faux flowers might win out but here's everything all together and this tiered tray I was so lucky to find this at the thrift store as well for $12 and then I think I had a coupon too for 20% off so everything came together so reasonably priced and I was so happy with the way it all looks so you guys will have to let me know which flower you prefer which apple you prefer and just if you made it to the end of this video I'm sorry it's so long I was really trying to slow things down and give you the step-by-step if you want to recreate any of these but let me know which you prefer the bergamot the faux flowers are you a green apple person a red apple person and I just want to thank you guys so much for watching thank you to all who have subscribed to my channel and keep coming back you guys are the best just the best I have such an awesome crafty tribe so if you haven't subscribed maybe consider it and if you enjoyed this video please remember to give it a big thumbs up that means a lot and be sure to check out the playlist it's all fall tiered tray videos so what's not to love about that I'll have the link to the playlist in my description box thank you for watching