What I Thrifted For Christmas | Holiday Decor Styling & DIY Upcycles

Hello, creative friends. I'm Anastasia, and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Throughout the year, I've visited thrift stores and estate sales, slowly curating a beautiful collection of Christmas decor. Today, I'll share with you what I brought home and how a few easy tricks and DIYs transformed them into elegant holiday pieces to use year after year. Let's go. I came across this large 30-inch wreath at an estate sale earlier this year, and even though my brain was not yet in Christmas mode, I knew this was worth grabbing for just $10. And if you look past the random ornaments and the big bow, this wreath has that realistic, long pine needle look that just looks a lot nicer than your typical pine wreaths. I saw this wreath at Target recently, and I was really inspired by its simplicity, and I loved that it just had these two bells hanging in the center, so I wanted to imitate this look on my wreath. Plastic bells like these are usually pretty easy to find at thrift stores that have a good Christmas selection, and I loved these in particular because of that beautiful pattern. These were just a dollar, and I knew that I could make them look like brass very easily. So I'm giving these a base coat of this matte coffee bean spray paint, which is a beautiful dark brown that I love using under my rub-n-buff. Now I'm using European gold rub-n-buff to cover the entire outside of the bell. I'm applying it with a piece of tissue paper that I balled up, but it also works great with a sponge. I did have to use a paintbrush to get into those deeper grooves, but rub-n-buff will ruin a paintbrush quickly, so you'd have to wash it out with mineral spirits, so make sure that it's one that you don't necessarily care about. I'm adding this burgundy velvet ribbon that I love so much. It is my favorite thing I've added to my Christmas decor this year, so I'll link it below in case you're interested. Once I've tied the ribbon onto one bell, I'm wrapping the ribbon twice around a piece of wire, which will secure the bells, but also give me the freedom to still adjust the way they're hanging once I put them on the wreath. I'm holding this up to my wreath to determine the length of ribbon that I need so that my bells hang at the correct height. I want one slightly higher than the other, so I cut my ribbon accordingly. Now I'm just twisting that wire directly onto the frame of the wreath. I really love the simplicity of this. I love that the beautiful pine needles can shine, and those faux brass bells in the center are such an eye-catcher. I also think this would be so beautiful with just a few sprigs of dark red berries to tie in that ribbon color with the rest of the wreath. I have always loved the look of a garland going up the staircase, but I've been holding out to try and thrift them. Earlier this year, I found this short garland for $4 at an estate sale that is made to go on the stairpost. And then just recently, I found three of these longer garlands at the thrift store for just $8 each. Usually, I see garlands at the thrift store that are just a cheaper-looking pine, but this one has some different types of pine needles woven through it, which makes it look more realistic, and it also has some nice pine cones and berries. I noticed on the tag that these are originally from Hobby Lobby, and they were $30 each, brand new. I'm first hanging the small garland on my stairpost, and then I'm attaching this cluster of bells. I actually DIY'd these out of party favor buckets, so if you want to see how I did that, I will link that video in the description for you to check out. It's a really fun one. Now I'm attaching that garland all the way up my staircase. I'm attaching them with zip ties, but since filming this, I have learned that they actually have garland ties of different styles that will blend in a bit better and overall just look better. I found these pine twist ties that are only a couple of dollars, and those would blend right in. There's also a couple decorative options like these that look like pretty twisted rope. These are also only a couple dollars, so I will link some options that I find below. The magic really happens when you fluff everything out, so I'm wearing my gloves so I don't get my hands all cut up from the plastic, and I'm maneuvering them to also hide the zip ties. Since we bought this house, we have not yet repainted or done anything to our entryway design-wise, but this beautiful garland along the staircase definitely brings me joy when I walk in here. I picked up this small wreath from an estate sale for $4. These pine stems have a unique look that I haven't seen on a wreath before. It's about 15 inches wide, and I think it will be a perfect size to fit on top of my center gallery wall picture frame. I have loved seeing other people hang small wreaths on top of frames or mirrors, so I'm excited to give that a try with this wreath. The real secret to beautiful-looking faux greenery is fluffing it out really, really well. Like I mentioned before, it can cut up your hands, though, so I do like to wear gloves to do this part so I can really bend and twist all the branches until they're all going in the same direction. I also came across this 28-count of bells at the thrift store for $5, and when I started researching what I could do with them, I saw this on Pinterest, which will be the perfect way to use them with my wreath. So I strung 10 of the bells up so I could spray paint them easily with this matte coffee bean spray. Now that they're all dry, I'm trying a new technique to add my European gold rub-and-buff. So I am putting a little rub-and-buff onto the bell and then putting it inside a baggie to rub it around and coat the entire bell. This worked super, super well and was pretty mess-free, and it gave the bell a nice dimensional and aged-looking brass tone. There are two ways that I kind of imagined making this bell cluster, so I'm going to try both and show you how so you can choose which one you prefer to do. So the first cluster, I'm taking a really long piece of twine and folding it in half, then tying a couple knots down at the folded end. Then I'm stringing all of my bells onto it. It's really easy to just push the bells closer together to get more of that clustered look, and this is what you end up with. I really liked the shape this created, but I didn't like that only the underneath of the bells were showing because you could kind of see that the inside of them were not the same color. The second method is to tie each of them individually onto a piece of twine. To make it look like a cluster, you want the bells to be staggered and fill in the gaps. So I'm laying them out on the table in the type of stacked pattern that I want them, and then cutting the twine at the top to be even with the rest of the twine. I'm periodically holding up the bundle to make sure I'm liking the way it's looking as I go. Then, of course, before you tie it off, hold it up and make any adjustments that you need. So I went ahead and adjusted all of my strings to where the bells were closer together so there's not all those gaps that you're seeing here, and it ends up kind of looking like a cluster of grapes. I'm using some super glue to connect all of those strands to one another, but a warning, be very careful with super glue because it actually made the twine start smoking briefly, which hasn't happened before, but it was a little bit alarming, so be careful of that. I folded the twine over into a loop and added some more super glue very carefully, and then wrapped a piece of twine around it to hide the glue. In addition to the bells, I'm adding some ribbon to the wreath, so I'm using some 20-gauge wire to twist around and create a little circle that I will thread my ribbon through. I'm also going to use wire to hang my bells, and they were a little long, so I had to adjust and thread the wire further down to get them at the right height. I ripped a piece of this chiffon fabric that looks really beautiful, so I'm adding in this burgundy ribbon with it as well, and threading those right through that little wire hoop that I created. To attach this to the picture frame, I'm using an adhesive hook that I'm sticking right to the glass, and it should come off no problem when I'm ready to take it down. I love how this adds layers and textures to my gallery wall, and brings the perfect amount of festive charm to it without having to swap out all of my artwork for Christmassy prints. I picked up this dark red lumbar pillow from Goodwill for $1.99. It was definitely giving, like, an early 2000s look, but in a way, I was also getting a subtle Christmas vibe from it, and if I'm being honest, this looks like a style that would be sold in today's stores as a vintage-style pillow. I always throw my thrifted pillows right into the washer on a gentle cycle, then I'll dry them several times on a low heat until they're completely dry. I also found this precious little guy at Goodwill. He was $4.99 and worth every single penny, because he's the cutest thing I've ever seen. I mean, come on, look, he's wearing that checkered hat in a green and white checkered jacket? He's, like, so in style right now, and he's got little bells at the end of his scarf. He's literally just the cutest. He gives me cuteness aggression when I look at him, but he does have some pilling, which I'm sure we all come across a lot with thrifted fabric items, but it's really easy to get rid of on most pieces as long as you have a little fabric shaver. Within literally 30 seconds, I was able to get off all of these pills, so now he just looks vintage, but he doesn't look worn out anymore. Just look at that before and after. I will link this fabric shaver below. It's very inexpensive and it's really handy to increase the longevity of our items. I am so happy that I finally got to show you these items that I've been collecting, and I hope you got some inspiration from it. This is my last video of 2025, but we're coming back with some amazing content in 2026, like my living room makeover reveal that I'm sure you've all been waiting on. I will be spending the rest of December working on that makeover, so make sure to subscribe so you can come back for that. I hope you all have a merry Christmas and happy holidays, and I look forward to seeing you in the new year. Bye, guys.