Craft Your Christmas

By Sensible Life Editorial Staff
Published December 7th, 2008

DOLLAR STORE STYLE

Marlene Alexander
www.dollarstorestyle.com

The advertisers will argue with us, but you really don’t need to spend a sleigh load of money making your home beautiful for the holidays. All you really need are a few dollar store basics and a small investment of time. These crafts take next to no time to make and each one costs about $2.

Christmas Cushion

Attractive tapestry style Christmas placemats come in a variety of patterns and cost $1 each, so for about $2 each you can make some new cushions for your living room or recover a smaller rectangular cushion you already have. Put two placemats together with the pattern sides facing out, stitch together one end and two sides by following along the existing seams of the placemats, stuff with fiberfill and stitch up the end.

Christmas Lampshade

Here’s a super easy way to dress up your lampshades for under $2 each. Choose some wire-edged ribbon in your color scheme, circle the top of the lampshade with it to find the length of ribbon you need and cut. Make a hole in the center of the ribbon just large enough to insert a Christmas pick. Bend the stem of the pick back along the length of the ribbon. Then hot glue the ends of the ribbon together and slip over the top of lampshade. A 9’ roll of fabric ribbon is only $1 so you could make enough lampshade decorations for all of your living room lamps and still have ribbon left over. Each Christmas pick is $1.

Doily ornament

This Christmas ornament was made using two 5 ½” embroidered fabric doilies. With the patterned sides facing out, we stitched around the gold trim around the poinsettia pattern, leaving a small opening at the top. You can stuff the ornament with fiberfill or, as here, use some small pieces of Christmas potpourri to add fragrance to an artificial tree. Then, fold a length of velvet ribbon in half, insert it into the opening and finish sewing up the top. Add a ready-made velvet bow by tying it around the ribbon holder. The fabric doilies were $1 for two, a large bag of potpourri is $1 and a card of bows is only $1. You could make several of these to hang on your own tree or to give as gifts.

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