Cute Christmas Crafts on a Budget! 🎄 Thrifted, Recycled & Dollar Tree DIYs for 2026.

Welcome to the Nurtured Home. I'm Angela. I've been working on Christmas crafts and I wanted to share them with you. They're budget-friendly crafts that are made from recycled items, some thrifted things, and of course a little bit of Dollar Tree thrown in as well. So let's get to it. For this craft, I grabbed an old pepper can and I just simply removed the top of it. Then I grabbed a piece of the green floral foam and put that in there and then I set it aside and this is the free printable that I have for this project. I actually have two versions of it but I'll share that with you in just a second. I went around and I cut the white off of the edges of it and it's actually sized a little bit larger than the salt I mean, the pepper can. And if you have the larger pepper can, I think it would work for that as well. This is the smaller pepper can that I have. But anyway, I went around, cut the edges off of it, and then cut it down to size so that it fit the size pepper can that I had. And here's where the two different designs come into play. I have one that has a little cream background behind the image and one that doesn't. I thought I would use the one that had the cream background behind it but when I wrapped it around my pepper can it was just a little bit too large Thank you. so I just ended up going with the one that did not have the the cream thing behind it. After I did that, I just trimmed it down to fit my little can, and then I just simply hot-glued around the can to adhere it to the pepper can. But... I did use photo paper for this. I feel like it, I feel like photo paper kind of prints out a little bit better, more vivid. And so I use photo paper for this. You don't have to use that. You can just use regular copy paper. If you use regular copy paper, you probably would not even need to hot glue it down. You could just use stick glue and glue it down. But mine was photo paper, so I went ahead with the hot glue. After I had it all glued down, I realized that my green foam that I put in the inside was just a little bit too small, so I just took a piece of that photo paper that I had and I just curled it up and stuck it in there to give it a little bit so it was firmer in there and it wasn't moving around. Then I took these little trees that I got at Dollar Tree and took the two smaller ones out and I also took this other set that I had gotten at Dollar Tree. It has six of them in there. I had the gold ones but I wanted it to be white for this project so I just took it outside and spray painted it white to sort of match the other Christmas trees. All you have to do is just pull that little plastic piece off. It comes right off of there. The one on the smallest one, it didn't pull right off. So I did have to take some wire cutters and cut that. But that was not a problem either. I grabbed this little microfiber cloth that I got from Dollar Tree. It's always like in the car detailing section or whatever. So I took that and I'm cutting out a little piece of it so that I can wrap it around the edge of my thing to give it just a little bit of like a snow covered look. I just hot glued that straight onto the little metal tin just around the edges of it. Since I had it all the way around and I had it glued all the way down, I just grabbed my trees that I got from Dollar Tree and I put the taller ones on the outer edges and I put the smaller one there in the front. Then I felt like it needed just a little bit of color up towards the trees and so I took these little berries that I got off of a berry pick that I got this from Hobby Lobby and it was half price so it was like, what, $1.50, $1.75, something like that. And if you will take those and if you will literally just pull them, they come out just like that. And they have a little wire that connects the two berries together. And what I did was I just started wrapping them around the Christmas trees. I tried cutting it in half and using them just singular like this, but it was actually easier to leave them together as two. And you can just wrap them around the little trees and it starts to, it just looks like little ornaments or something on the tree. And it definitely has sort of a rustic vibe to it so I took some of the jute twine and just made a simple bow and attached it to the front of it. This was so simple and so easy to make but it would be super cute if you had a tiered tray or just sitting as a shelf sitter. I hope you enjoyed it. This Christmas project started with this little decor piece that I found at Goodwill for 99 cents. I loved the price of it so I grabbed it and I used my heat gun to take the little bow off of it and once I had the bow off and all the hot glue off of it I took some Apple Barrel paint in white And painted the edges of my little box. And this is just regular acrylic Apple Barrel paint. You can get it at Walmart, you can get it at Michael's or Hobby Lobby, any place like that. And I picked up these wooden dowels at Walmart. It came with a pack of three of them. And so this is what I'm going to use for mine. But if you do not have a saw that will cut yours, this is a little tabletop saw that I have and I love it, but if you don't have one of these, that's okay. You could get a toilet paper or a paper towel roll and cut it down and make it the size to basically be the same size as the wooden dowel and I feel like it would work just as well. And then I just took my saw and cut the dowel rod down to the size that I needed it. Once I had it cut down to the size that I needed, I just took some wood glue and I glued the dowel rod onto the top of the little decor wooden piece at the bottom and set that aside to dry. Then I just took some cardboard and I cut it down and what I'm going to do with this is I'm going to make some presents out of this cardboard. So I took it and I cut it down. I would cut it into some rectangles and some squares. So what I would do is I would cut all the same size and then hot glued them together so that my presents had a little bit more of a substantial feel to it and they were a little thicker and they actually looked like a present instead of cardboard. And I just did the same thing for three of the presents. I made three presents in all. And after I had all my little cardboard presents, I took some wrapping paper and I just wrapped them up just as if I was wrapping a little present. And since I'm sure you know how to wrap a present, I will just skip forward. Once I had all my presents wrapped up, I just took some white ribbon and wrapped around it and made little simple bows to go around my presents. And I just did the basic same thing with the other two presents as well. Now if you're one of my sweet subscribers you know that I am loving using this joint compound or patching plaster as it's called here in my projects this winter. I have enjoyed making it, it looks like snow, you can just do so much with it, but I'm going to use it again today and add the white paint to it to make it look like snow on top of my wooden piece here. So all I do is I just get it, I add some white paint to it, just the acrylic, Apple Barrel, white paint, mix it around until it gets smooth, and then I just applied it to the top of the piece, the wooden piece here, to make it look like it was just snow covered. But now I will tell you this one thing. I actually applied too much of it. You should have probably applied it thinner than this. I mean, I'm still learning how to use this with craft projects. But when it dried, I had used so much of it that it cracked whenever it dried. And whenever I've used it on other pieces and I've used it where it was a thinner coat, it did not crack like that. So just don't make it as thick as I made it here. If you'll do it I think yours will not. crack but mine definitely did crack it's still okay it's still okay I mean snow has cracks in it I guess but uh anyway I did want to let you know that though just don't do it quite as thick as mine and I don't think you will have any problem with it. So while I was waiting for my snow to dry I took the the same apple barrel white paint and I just painted my little wooden dowel rod And while the joint compound snow was still wet, I took some of this really fine glitter and applied it onto the the top of the snow to just give it a little bit of a shimmer feel to it. Once my dowel rod had dried, I just took a piece of red ribbon and wrapped it around the dowel rod to give it a candy cane striped look. Now this little mailbox came from the Dollar General. It was, I probably got it a couple of years ago actually. It was only a dollar and I never used it so I thought this would be a great craft project for it. And so I just took that little mailbox and I glued it on top of my dowel rod. And after the joint compound had completely dried, I brought my little presents back and I And I glued them down also. And once you've gotten this far you could stop right here and it would be totally cute. I did want to add a little bit more to mine so I took some ribbon and wrapped it around the bottom of my wooden piece. I think I got this the candy cane ribbon. I think I got that at Hobby Lobby. And then I also added some different pieces of greenery and I added some berries to it and a little messy bow. So I'll just fast forward it here so you can watch it all come together. And since we had snow everywhere else, I thought we needed some snow on our greenery. So I just took some of my apple barrel paint. I got a little bit of it on my paintbrush and just dabbed at the greenery and the different things there in the front to add a little bit of a snow look to it as well. And that's it for this craft. I hope you enjoyed it. This whimsical craft started with stuff that was headed straight for the trash can. So I took this tin can and applied this joint joint compound to it. If you've watched any of my other videos you'll know I love using joint compound to add texture to stuff and so what I did was I took it and I added some white paint to it because we're going to be making a little snowman and so I wanted this to give our little snowman a little bit of texture. After you add the white paint you just keep mixing it around until it sort It sort of becomes a smooth consistency. Once you have it to the consistency that you want, I just always take this little sponge and I just dab it up and down on the tin can to give it a cute little texture, a little snow looking texture to it. I have also heard other people say that you could take like scrunched up paper and do the same thing if you didn't have a sponge. So I don't know. If you've used something different, let me know. That would be interesting to know. I've never used anything different than the sponge, but if you don't have a sponge, you might try that. Just getting a piece of paper, crumpling it all up, and doing the same thing with it. If you do, let me know how it works. That's interesting. After I did that I set the can aside so that the joint compound could dry and while it was drying I took this old sweater that I had, I took the sleeve of it and cut it off and I'm gonna put the yogurt cup inside of the sleeve to make the little hat for the snowman and all I did was I just ran it straight up in there and then I used the hot glue to affix the sweater onto the yogurt cup. Now I love crafting, but I am not that great at artwork. So I tried drawing eyes and all that kind of stuff and it just was not working for me. So I had this little ladybug that had these little wooden dots on the back of it. So I just used my heat tool, got those little dots off of the back of the ladybug, and I'm going to use that for my eyes. So what I did was before I Attach the eyes though. I took some decoupage, and I just ran it over my the the The can that was now dry, I ran the decoupage over my can and then I took this faux snow that I got from Dollar Tree and just sprinkled it over the top of my little snowman to give it, you know, make it look like it had been out in the snow somewhere. Then I just took my hot glue and I hot glued my eyes on. I also took a white paint pen and just gave it a little dot on each eye and then I took this is actually the button that came off of that sweater that I'm using for the hat. I took one of those buttons and I just painted it orange and so that is the nose for my little Little snowman. And like I told you, I am not an artist, so I tried drawing a smile and it just wasn't working. So I actually decided to just kind of trace me out a smile on the, you know, the foil part of the yogurt cup. That's what I did. I just traced it out and the best I could, and then I cut it out of the foil. And I don't know why that worked better for me, but it did. If you're an artist, you could just draw it right on there. But for some reason, this worked better for me. And so this is what I did. I cut the smile out of the foil and just hot glued it straight on there. And then I took this ribbon that I got off of a Christmas decor piece from a garage sale. I took this and I'm going to use it for his little scarf. I just simply wrapped it around him, made a little knot so that it looked like his little scarf. Then it was time to put his little hat on. So I just hot glued his hat straight to the top of the can. Then I just took a piece of ribbon and I made just a simple knot there right above where the yogurt cup ended. And later I'll come back and I'll cut some little fringe in the top of it. But before I did that, I wanted to add some greenery. So I added different kinds of greenery that I had laying around. And I also added some of these berries. These are just like little individual berries, but I just wrapped them together. I think I got these off of Amazon. If I can find the link to them, I will leave it in the description box below. But I'm just hot gluing all of this onto the top of the little hat. And I found these at Hobby Lobby. I think they're actually maybe like an ornament to hang on a tree, but I just saw peppermints that I could use in crafts. So I bought them and I'll get a lot of little peppermints off of it to add to my crafts. And as you'll see, I decided to take the berries off, put the peppermint on, and then I bring the berries back. And it was at this point that I grabbed my scissors and I just cut a few strips in the top of his little hat to make the fringe for his little winter hat. And then before I stopped, I decided to go back to my decoupage and I just put little dots of decoupage on his hat so that I can take some more of that faux snow and just sprinkle it over the top of his hat and the decoupage should make the snow stick to his little cap. And I just took my finger and I just sort of smudged, I guess you would say, the decoupage and the snow around because it looked kind of crazy, just all stuck in one little spot. So that's what I did. I just took my finger and smudged it around. And this is what he turned out looking like. I think he's so adorable. And my friend, in a world that can be complicated and stressful, I pray you find inspiration and peace in the simple things here at The Nurtured Home. I'll catch you on the next one.