Turn Dollar Store Supplies Into Stunning Home Decor! | Dollar Tree DIY

Hello, Creative Gems. Welcome back to Creativity. And if you're new here, I'm Sandy. Today will be about mixing silver and gold to dress up your home decor. I'll be making a few different home decor pieces today, and we'll be starting with this 12-inch round frameless mirror. I'll be combining it with this round wood tray that is just about the same size. I found this wood tray at the Dollar Tree, and although it says it's supposed to be used for resin pouring, we're going to make use of it in a different way. Let's go ahead and remove the plastic wrap so we can take a closer look at it. This tray has a very nice flat bottom, and the top part is also flat with a raised edge all around it, which is why they call it a tray. But I find this tray a little too flat, so I'm going to give it a bit more dimension. So, if I flip this tray over, this is actually where I'm going to place my 12-inch mirror that I showed you earlier. But before I do that, I want to attach some homemade legs to the bottom of this tray. I have four of these small silver ornament balls left over from Christmas. I already removed the silver caps off of each and snipped off the tips from each ornament ball, which is why we are now left with a hole in each of the balls. Along with the ornament balls, we'll be using four of the bases from these plastic champagne glasses, also from the Dollar Tree. If you tug gently on the base, they actually come right off. So, I'm going to go ahead and get four, since we'll be making four legs for this tray. So, to make the legs, we're going to figure out how to securely attach one ball and one base together like this. Currently, the stem of the base is larger than the size of the hole in the ball, so what I'm going to do is enlarge the hole. To do that, all I'm going to do is take my hot glue gun, make sure it's on, and then insert the tip straight into the hole. The heat from the hot glue gun will help melt the plastic just enough to widen the hole. And if the hole is still not big enough, then we'll just continue to use the tip of the hot glue gun to make it bigger. This step might be a little bit of a trial and error until you can fit the stem into the hole. And it's better to enlarge the hole a bit at a time because you can always make the hole a bit bigger, but it's going to be too late if you made it a bit too big. And there we go. We got the hole just right, the size is perfect, and now the stem fits perfectly into the hole. So, I'll continue to do that until I have all four legs constructed. And while I work on this, I would like to take a moment to thank you for tuning in to today's craft project. If you enjoy glam home decor and DIY crafts on a budget, please let me know by hitting the subscribe button. And if you like what you see today, please give me a thumbs up as well so YouTube will continue to recognize my channel to other viewers like you. So now that we have all four legs constructed, let's go ahead and position them to the bottom of the tray. Here I've placed them equidistance from each other. But before I secure them into place, I want to show you two different ways we can set the legs. First, we can set the legs so the balls are touching the table surface like so. Or we can turn it upside down and have the champagne glass base sitting on the table surface instead. Personally, I think I like the first way better because not only is it going to be easier to secure the leg into place that way, but secondly, I think the base is a little too large for this tray. I think seeing the smaller ornament balls would look much nicer. So now I'm going to go ahead and position the legs again and then I'll hot glue them each into place. We only really need a very tiny bit of hot glue applied to the perimeter of each base because the base is plastic and so it will bond almost instantly to the wood tray. Now I'm going to secure the 12 inch glass mirror onto the other side of the wood tray. I'm going to start with a bit of wood glue first and I'm going to apply it to the outer circumference of the wood tray being careful not to get too close to the edges. We want to avoid getting glue on the edge because we don't want any of the wood glue to ooze out once we place the mirror on top. The great thing about using wood glue is the bond is very strong and it only takes about 20 minutes to cure. Next, I'll take a tube of Fix-All and apply that closer to the center of the wood panel. The Fix-All is like a super glue so it will provide a very secure, long-lasting hold although it will take hours to fully cure. Usually I let it alone for overnight and then by the next morning it is fully cured. Now we're ready to place the mirror onto the wood tray. It's ever so slightly smaller than the wood tray so I want to make sure that I place it right in the center. See how there's about 2 millimeters around the outer edge of the mirror where the wood tray is exposed? We'll want to figure out a way to cover that up to make it look nice. Okay, so it's been about 20 minutes and the two pieces are adhering to each other. So I have this rhinestone trim. If I peel back the wax backing, you can see this trim is self-adhesive so I won't have to mess with any more glue. This here is two rows that I'm showing you and I'm going to see if it's enough or too much. So it looks like I should only need one row of the rhinestone trim to cover up the exposed wood. So I'm going to go ahead and cut the trim down to a single row. And by the way, in case you want to stock up on this rhinestone trim I have a link to it down in the description box along with a link to the 12-inch mirror we're crafting with today. And in fact, you will find links to all my favorite crafting tools, supplies, and embellishments down in the description box. Alright, so we are now down to one row. I'm going to start applying it to the wood tray but I'm also going to have to be very careful when handling the tray and mirror because I want to avoid the two pieces from separating in case the glue hasn't fully cured. And if you're still with me, drop me a comment with the word tray and let me know what you use your trays for. I have made so many for my home I'm actually running out of table surfaces to hold all my trays. But I do like to use them to display my favorite candle holders and trinkets. I do also like to use them to display my... I also have some of my DIY apothecary jars placed on some trays I've made and they look quite nice. And I know people like to display their favorite perfume bottles and even jewelry pieces. I actually think trays are so versatile because not only can they be beautiful table decor but they're actually nice pieces to hold your treasured items as well. So we now have the rhinestone trim applied and this is what the tray looks like so far. It's a subtle difference but I really think it's the details that are sometimes just as important as anything else. So earlier I mentioned that I felt like the wood tray was too flat and that I was going to add some dimension to it. Well, these Dollar Tree chains are going to come in handy for that. Every fall season approaching Halloween Dollar Tree always sells these chains. They're black and silver and made of some kind of thick plastic. I'm going to go ahead and separate each of the chain link pieces. And I find them to be a bit odd because some of the pieces have much more silver while other pieces are much darker. And some of the pieces actually have quite a bit of texture on them while some of them are quite smooth. But the good news is that for this craft project it won't really matter what color they are and how smooth they are because we're going to go ahead and paint these anyhow. So I'm going to go ahead and continue to separate all these chain link pieces because we're going to paint them individually. And to paint them I'm going to be using a chrome paint marker. You'll notice I have a glove on because I'm not sure how messy this is going to be and I want to make sure I don't get any of the chrome paint on my hands. I'll start with a metallic silver color for half the chain link pieces first. And see how vibrant and shiny this looks? I'll continue painting these chain link pieces and cover about 85% of each chain link piece. And then I'll let them dry so I can handle the painted sides while I paint the rest of the chain link pieces where my fingers are currently holding the chains. And while the silver one is dry I'm going to paint the other half of my chain pieces metallic gold. See how shiny this one looks? And by the way, if you want to stock up on these chrome paint markers check my description box for a link to them. Okay, so it's the next day and I have all my chain pieces painted and dried and here's what they look like. I'm really happy how they turned out. They actually look like they have a metallic finish to them which is exactly the look I was going for. So now I'm going to place one horizontally around the edge of the wood tray to see where the chain makes direct contact with the wood tray because that's where I'll want to apply the hot glue to adhere the two together. But before I apply the hot glue I think it will be easier to sand down the area where the hot glue will be applied to to make it easier for the two pieces to bond together. I'm just thinking that whatever material or ingredient the paint marker contains it may not bond as well to the wood tray so sanding down the chain link will remove a bit of the paint and create a little bit of grit. Okay, so now that we have lightly sanded down the pieces I'm going to check to make sure how many pieces we need to place around the wood tray and that will give me an idea of the spacing that I'll want to leave between each chain link piece. And it's actually really important not to skip this step because there's nothing worse than hot gluing all your pieces and then you get to the very end and you're left with a gap that is too small to fill but then too wide that it would look too funny if you just left it as is. So now that I have an idea of the spacing I'm going to go ahead and start hot gluing each piece to the wood tray and a little bit of hot glue is all we should need. And while I work on this, comment down below with the word chain and let me know if any of you have ever crafted with these chains before and if you have, I would be super curious to know what you have made with these chains. Did you use them as embellishments? Did you paint them like I did? Or did you just use them as they were intended, as Halloween decorations? Let me know down in the comments. Okay, so I managed to glue all the pieces and now I'm noticing that we're left with these small gaps between each of the chain link pieces. They're about a centimeter or a centimeter and a half wide which is exposing the original wood so obviously I'm going to want to cover those areas up. And to do that, I'm going to turn to my trusty silver pearl beads that many of you have probably already seen me craft with. I think about two or three pieces is what will fit into these small gaps. And you can see here I've got my gloves on again because the pearl beads are so tiny so when I hold them down to the wood panel I don't want any excess hot glue to burn my fingers. So I'm going to go ahead and cover up the remaining gaps with these pearl beads and then I'll come back to show you the final results in a minute. ♪♪♪♪ And here's the final look for our silver and gold chain link tray. I have this one sitting on top of my ottoman in the living room and I think the combination of the gold and the silver really brightens up the space. In fact, the colour theme of this area is mostly white, grey and silver so the gold really adds a nice pop of colour. And here I've got a candle sitting on a metallic silver candle holder placed in the centre of the tray with some extra matching chain links sprawled across the tray. What do you think of the two together? And are the extra chain links too much or do they complement each other? Let me know down in the comments. Meanwhile, let's go back into the studio because I want to show you a second home decor piece I can make with the extra chain link pieces. I have this tall round container that I got from the Dollar Tree a long time ago. I got it because it's silver and I thought it would be really pretty to enclose a gift inside it for someone. It actually came with a matching lid but I have no idea where that went so now I'm going to repurpose this container and turn it into a vase. What I'm going to do is place these chain link pieces all around the outside of the container alternating between the silver and gold chain link pieces just like we did for the tray. But this time, I'm going to position them vertically starting at the base. Once again, I'm checking to see exactly where on the chain link piece it will make direct contact with the container because that's where we're going to apply the hot glue. And this time, we're not going to sand the chain link pieces down because I think the hot glue will bond the cardboard with the chain link pieces quite well. When placing the chain link pieces onto the cardboard container make sure that you place them perfectly straight. And with the hot glue, you only need to apply a tiny dollop and then you'll only have a couple of seconds to make any adjustments before the hot glue cools and dries completely. When the first row at the base is done we're going to proceed with a second row right above the first row of chain links. And once again, I'll alternate between silver and gold. Once the second row is done, you'll notice that what's left at the top is not enough to fit another row of vertical chain links without the chain link pieces sticking out beyond the rim of the cardboard container. You can proceed with a row in this manner and this vase will actually look perfectly fine but for mine, I have a slightly different design in mind. Rather than gluing down the pieces vertically I'll place them down horizontally. And once again, a little bit of hot glue is all you need to secure the pieces onto the cardboard container. As a final piece of embellishment I want to clean up the rim of the cardboard container by applying this string of silver beads to make the opening of this vase look a little prettier. The silver beads are a perfect size because any bigger and I wouldn't be able to glue them down. But as you can see here, the beads make a nice little trim to hide the ugly cardboard opening. And here's the final look for our vase. Here I am using a silver metallic candle holder from the Dollar Tree as a base for the vase. With the vase sitting on top of this base it gives it a little bit of extra height and it looks perfect with the full purple cala lily flowers I placed inside. And here I have the vase sitting directly on top of a tall pedestal I made out of an old cardboard box. It looks so pretty sitting beside my fireplace. And then here I have the vase on the silver base placed on top of a side table I made. I honestly can't decide where this vase looks the best so I'll probably have to move it around every once in a while. And here are both the tray and the vase together displayed as a matching set. Which piece do you like best? The tray or the vase? Or maybe both together? Let me know down in the comments. In the meantime, if you enjoyed today's craft tutorial please like and subscribe to my channel and share with other creative gems. Also, remember to hit the notification bell so you can be notified every time I have another DIY glam project on my channel.