Dollar Tree Christmas DIY's 2025 / Budget Friendly Christmas Decor

Today I've got several new budget-friendly Christmas décor ideas using Dollar Tree supplies. I picked up these two nutcrackers several years ago and I had never done anything with them. I found them while rummaging through my Dollar Tree Christmas storage bin and I had remembered these nutcracker candle holders that I came across recently on Pinterest. I love the bronze tone, it looks like they came from a high-end retailer but so simple to create on a budget. I removed all of the hair from the two that I have since my inspiration didn't have any hair on theirs and I think this is one of those elements that take the nutcrackers from looking cheap to more elegant and high-end. They already look so much better just like this. Since my nutcrackers are on the smaller side, I'll have to put the candles on top of their hats and this still worked out to make them have a staggered height since both nutcrackers are a little bit different. But the hats have a button on top that is preventing my candle holders from sitting flat so I used my hot knife to remove that little piece. Then I glued the candle holders that I have from Hobby Lobby down on top of those hats with E6000 and then a dab of hot glue in the center for an immediate hold so I can keep on working with them but apparently I forgot to hit record on that part. Now to get that bronze look, I spray painted the nutcrackers with a combination of black and then this leather brown spray paint. When adding metallic on top of paint like Rub and Buff to get an aged or more vintage look, I think a brown base makes it look a little softer and more authentic over having a solid black base. That gives it a little bit more of a harsh effect. But this time I wanted to try combining the two colors and add more depth to my finished project. I went back and forth a couple of times with each color. You could leave them just like this. I really love that combination of the black and the brown mixed together. It feels soft yet elegant and still modern. I wanted mine to look more like the Inspiration though so I covered them with Rub and Buff in European Gold. This one looks the most like bronze to me. So at first I had dabbed it on with this soft makeup sponge but that was just taking way too long so I got out the makeup brush that I typically use for my Rub and Buff projects. I did two coats of the Rub and Buff. The first coat I just dabbed it on. I didn't want it to be too heavy and still wanted to see that black brown underlayer but I didn't love how that looked. It was a little bit too splotchy for my liking so I went over it again and this time I did a swirling motion but adding a light layer so it's not completely full coverage. You can see the difference here. The Nutcracker on the left has that second coat and I think it looks more high end like this. This project went viral on TikTok and I just had to create one for myself. It looked so much fun. It's a giant hot cocoa mug and I had all of the supplies already at home. My version is a little bit smaller than a lot that I've seen but I found the largest plant pot that I had already had in my garage and I got this one from Dollar Tree several years ago. Now, it does have a slick surface so I scuffed it up with some sandpaper before painting it red. Since my pot or my cup was on the smaller side, it was difficult to find a handle for it. All of the videos that I've seen used a pool noodle but that was way too big for mine and it made the proportions look off. I thought a foam wreath ring might work better but even the smaller size was just too big for my cup. So I had to come up with a new plan for a handle. I grabbed my macrame cord and wire to create a more decorative handle. This was really simple just using a square knot and then twisting the additional colored cords around it to create a spiral look with that red color wrapped around the spine. Next I traced the cup opening on cardboard and then I cut it out about an inch smaller to sit down inside. This is going to be that hot cocoa layer. For the straw, I had a scrap piece of pink pool noodle that was the perfect size. I did paint it in that same crimson red and then I wrapped white duct tape around it to look like a candy cane. And since I had painted it, it was a little bit easier to glue down on top of the cardboard hot cocoa without completely eating through the foam of the pool noodle. For the marshmallows, I grabbed a few of these white floral foam blocks from Dollar Tree and this was the only thing that I bought for this project. And again, since mine is smaller, I had to cut these down. So instead of using one for each marshmallow, I was able to get four marshmallows out of one block. I cut the corners off of each rectangle and then I sanded it down to make them look more rounded like a marshmallow. And since this is Dollar Tree foam, it was super easy to sand, just very, very messy. I even rounded over the top so it looked more like that marshmallow shape. And then I glued them down on top of the hot cocoa cardboard. Just make sure to use a low temp hot glue gun here so it doesn't melt the foam. Mine is dual temp, so I put it on low. All of the TikTok versions I've seen added a snowflake decal to the front of the cup, but I wanted to be different, so I cut out this tree decal with my Cricut. And the circle was a little bit tricky to put on, but eventually I did figure it out. I love how this big cup of hot cocoa turned out. It was so fun to make and gives such a whimsical feel to the holidays. I found this little grab bag of wood houses at Goodwill a while back, and I had actually picked them up to use in a display that I'm working on for Above My Kitchen Cabinets, but before I finished that project, I wanted to use them for Christmas first. I found a similar set at Hobby Lobby for only $3 when it's on a sale week if you wanted to create something similar. I painted the houses white with chalk paint, and as I was painting that last one, I noticed that all of the houses with the red roofs, the red was bleeding right through the white paint. I tried painting over it multiple times, but that wasn't working at all. These have like four coats of white paint on them, and you can still see that red peeking through, but I'm adding glitter to the top, so I thought that that will help cover it up more. Well, I didn't have actual glitter, so I'm using this faux snow that you can find at Dollar Tree, and it has that similar iridescent look. I put a thick coat of Mod Podge on the roofs, and then I dipped them into that faux snow to coat them, and I let it dry. When I came back to them a couple of hours later, that red was showing through even more than it was before, and now it looked like a neon pink. It was looking completely crazy, so I decided to do something I've never done before, use actual glitter. My husband's gonna kill me. Not really. He was actually at Hobby Lobby with me when I picked up the glitter, and I told him exactly what I was gonna be doing with it. He just really despises glitter. But first I had to scrape off all of this faux snow off the tops of the roofs. It did leave a lot of texture behind from that original glue, but that's okay, it's not gonna affect anything. So before I add the new glitter, I sprayed the houses with a clear coat sealer to prevent that red from bleeding through any further, and then I spray painted them white. Finally, this time it stuck, so let's try this project again. I did the same thing as before, coated the roofs with Mod Podge, and then dipped them in glitter. I love the way that these turned out so much better, and with that thick layer of Mod Podge, it really did look like snow on top of the roofs. They're covered in glitter! They're so pretty! There ain't nothing pretty about that, it's disgusting, it's gross. How dare you do that behind us. I'm putting that in the video. The ones with the chimneys were a little bit more difficult because I couldn't dip them onto the plate, so instead I poured the glitter on top, and then I patted it down with a silicone spatula. I wanted to prevent the glitter from shedding as much as possible, even though I think this looks so beautiful, I still don't want to find glitter all over my house. So I added another thick coat of the Mod Podge on top by just patting it down so that it didn't lift up any of that glitter underneath of it, and I was a little bit worried that this wasn't going to work. I will say that the houses don't have quite that same magical effect that they did without the top layer of Mod Podge. After sitting on it for a week, I ended up adding another light layer of the Mod Podge and glitter on top. To me, it looks so much more sparkly and magical for the holidays without that top coat. I'll suffer through finding bits of glitter this season. This one has that Mod Podge top coat, and you can see the glitter just isn't quite as noticeable from all angles compared to the one without the top coat that is so lively and beautiful. I've been wanting to create these large outdoor light up ornaments for years, and I've never gotten around to doing them, but this year I was determined to make them. I'm using this spool of I believe it's 12 gauge wire to create the shape of the ornaments, and for that largest one, I made it the same circumference as my exercise ball. I've also seen people use chicken wire to get the frame for these ornaments, or you can use hula hoops or a large balloon. There are tons of options. I cut down six pieces of wire for that large ornament, but then I only ended up using four on my medium and my small ornaments. I'm really not sure which was the better route to go. At first, the four spoke ornaments looked more circular, but in the end, I actually think that the largest six spoke one looks the best. But I stapled all the wire pieces in a circle shape down to a wood block to be that base and hold them upright, and then I zip tied everything together at the top. Then I wrapped all of the spokes with these fairy lights that we found at Lowe's. There's 30 feet in each box, so I used one box on that big ornament by itself, and then I used one box between both the medium and the small ornaments. So those two are going to have to sit right next to each other, but that's fine with me. I covered the large ornament first off camera so I could figure out how to cover them the best, but I'm using this deco mesh from Hobby Lobby. I'm going for a red and white color palette for Christmas this year. You can get deco mesh from Dollar Tree, but with Christmas items 50% off at Hobby Lobby, this was the better deal. On the solid color ornaments, I doubled up the mesh by wrapping the whole thing vertically and then again horizontally. That gave them a more solid look and less sheer. But for this printed one that I'm showing you on camera, if I had used that same method, I would have lost the striped print. It would have ended up looking like a tartan print instead, and I didn't want that. I also thought it would end up looking a little bit more messy with the way that the mesh needs to lay around the ornament. I did my best to line up the stripes as I went, and I think this one turned out pretty good. Sorry this clip is completely blurry, but for the top I used scraps that I'd cut off from other sections, and that worked out perfect. Now for the hanger portion, I'm using these decorative plastic bowls from Dollar Tree, and I glued a wood ring on the top. I've used these wood rings previously from another project, so you can see they have a little bit of glue on the bottom of them, but this was perfect to reuse them on. And then I spray painted them with a combination of champagne bronze and antique bronze. You have to use your imagination for now. It's not even Halloween yet when I'm filming this, so I don't have my yard set up yet for Christmas, but I will share that in an upcoming video. You won't want to miss it. I am making these giant gingerbread houses out of insulation foam. They are so cool. For this project, I'm using three different sizes of these icicle ornaments from Dollar Tree. Now I wanted to use the clear icicles for a more magical and icy look, but I only had two packs of the large size that I'd bought last Christmas, and that wasn't enough to cover the vase. So I went to several Dollar Tree stores looking for the other sizes or even additional packs of the large size that I could just cut down myself, but all I could find were these blue ones. So for now, that's what I'm working with, but as I was wrapping up this video, I took one last trip to Dollar Tree and I found the clear ones. So I'll show you how that one turned out at the end. The blue might have looked pretty cool. My husband really liked them, but I didn't want blue in my decor this year. So instead, I painted them all white, and the solid white paint definitely takes away from that clear, icy look that icicles have. Now I want the icicles to have a flat bottom and sit flat across the bottom of my vase, so I cut off these ornament hanger parts. I used my miter saw to do this, and you don't need to cut all the way through. I would just cut about halfway, maybe a little bit more, and then just snap them right off. This was seriously an arm workout. Then I started gluing the icicles around my vase in no particular pattern. I'm using hot glue, but hot glue and glass don't really get along. I wanted this to be removable since I do like to reuse my items and change them up from year to year. I knew this wasn't going to hold up, but the icicles started falling off almost immediately. So I did re-glue them down, and this time I added a dab of the glue to the sides of the icicles to glue them to each other. I used some of the smallest size to add dimension, and I glued those down on top of that first row. Then to bring back some of the magical icicle look, I thought glitter would help. I had this idea to do like an ombre type of glitter, although I'm not really sure that turned out how I had envisioned it to. I layered the glitter paint on thick at the bottom and then lighter as I went up the icicles in the vase. But with the glitter being clear and iridescent, you really can't see that ombre effect, but that's okay. I still think it looks pretty cool in the end. So for the clear icicles, I did that same exact process. I cut off that hanger and also created a few additional sizes by cutting a little bit more off of select ones. So I have five different sizes to work with instead of just three. Then I glued them to the vase same as before, adding the glue to the sides of the icicles to glue them to each other instead of to that glass vase. For a candle, I found these really cute little flickering flameless candles at the Dollar Tree and it even comes out of that tinted plastic sleeve that it's in. So I was able to just set that candle directly into my glass vase. I actually wish I would have picked up a few more of these. I'm not sure how well you can see the glitter on the camera, but the white is pretty sparkly. Let me know which version you like better. I found these adorable little wood frames at Dollar Tree in two different styles that I could not pass up, but I had no intentions on using them for a Christmas project until I came across this sweet little McGee and Co. brass frame ornament. Now I know the Dollar Tree frames look pretty different, but I'm just using the inspo for my idea. I used that same black and leather brown spray paint combo to coat the frames similar to the nutcrackers. And I also used Rub and Buff over top. This time I used both my European gold and then gold leaf on another frame for a more golden look since that European gold is deeper and more brass leaning. I did want to zhuzh these up a little bit from that solid look, so one of the frames I added a clay decal to it. I didn't want to take away from the decorative cutout too much, which is why I only did the one. But I'm showing you here how you could add other elements to the frames, I just didn't have anything that was more Christmassy in my silicone molds. I glued the clay down while it's still wet, and then I let that dry and gave it that same spray paint plus Rub and Buff treatment. Now on the two solid frames, I wanted them to look a little bit more aged, so I lightly drybrushed some dark wax across them and I made sure to hit those edges a little bit more to bring out the detail. Now I had two ideas for these, you could make them magnets, Dollar Tree sells these little magnet packs and you just glue a magnet to the back of your project, super simple. Or you could make it look more like the inspo and add a ribbon to create an ornament. Either way, I thought these little frames were so sweet and adorable, I'd love to make even more out of just clay to look even more like the Mageean Coversion.