I decided I wanted a Valentine’s Day wreath this year.  I’ve never been a big wreath person, but Pinterest can change a girl.  I wasn’t sure exactly how my wreath would look, I just knew I wanted it to be big, bold, and red.

I headed to Dollar Tree and just started picking up red Valentine items that “spoke” to me.  I liked the sparkly garland, and the heart picks were too cute to pass up.  I had a ton of red ribbon left over from Christmas, and some wood heart frames I had purchased at Michael’s.  I looked at my collection for several days, still not sure what to do with it.  So I just started playing with my supplies, and I wound up with a wreath that I absolutely LOVE.  Here’s how I ended up making it.

Project estimate:

• Wreath form, $1
• Wire edged ribbon, on hand or $1 and up
• Valentine garland, $1
• Heart Picks, $1
• Wood heart frame, $1
• Puffy hearts, $1 for 6
• Stickers, on hand

Total:  $5 and up

Step one:  Wrap the wreath form with ribbon (optional, but I can’t stand floral foam shedding!)  Paint the heart shaped frame.

Step two:  Cut the wire garland into 24 inch pieces.  Wrap one end of wire around the wreath form, and coil the rest into a loose spiral.  Repeat.

Step three:  Cut the wire edged ribbon into 32 inch strips.  Attach it to the wreath form by doubling the ribbon, and pulling the ribbon ends through the loop.  Repeat.

Step four:  Slide the ends of the heart picks into the base of the ribbon loops.

Step five:  Glue the wood heart to the front, and attach the puffy heart with a ribbon.  Add a cupid sticker (optional).

Step six:  Curl the ends of the wired ribbon in different directions.

Isn’t this a fun wreath?  If you don’t care for my red/gold combo, you could easily make it white/pink or any other colors that say “Valentine’s Day” to you.  Have fun crafting and creating!

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This quick, easy project doesn’t just have to be for Valentine’s Day.  You could easily use different stamps to create custom decorative candles for your home, for parties, or for gifts.  I made several winter themed candles as gifts for my neighbors for Christmas, and they loved them!  So pull out your inks and stamps, and let’s decorate some candles!

Project estimate:

• Candles, on hand or $1 and up
• Stamps and ink, on hand
• Tissue paper, on hand
• Hair dryer or heat embossing tool, on hand

Total:  Free or $1 and up

It’s a good idea to do a few practice runs with old candles or dollar store candles.  I often find bags of new to barely used candles at thrift stores, and they are great for practicing this technique.  The candle I used in this project was purchased at Dollar Tree, and while it is a battery operated votive candle, it has a wax coating on the outside, so it works for this project.

To make your own stamped Valentine’s Day Candle:

Step one:  Cut a piece of tissue paper to fit around your candle.

Step two:  Stamp the tissue paper.  First, I covered my paper with a text stamp that has the definition of love. Then I stamped the heart image over the text.

Step three:  Wrap the stamped tissue paper around the candle.

Step four:  Heat the tissue paper with a heat embossing tool or a hair dryer.  As the wax melts, the tissue paper will seem to disappear into the candle, leaving only the image.  Be careful to keep moving your heat tool so you don’t burn the tissue paper or create uneven dimples in your candle.

If you want to, you can further embellish your candle with ribbon, string, rhinestones, etc.  I’m decorating a few candles with blue and green damask stamps to match my living room.  Which stamps are you going to reach for?  Have fun creating!

The post Tutorial: Stamped Valentine’s Day Candle appeared first on Dollar Store Crafts.

Image by flickr user Eileen Kane. Licensed via Creative Commons.

If you have a rubber stamp collection, you know how much money you’ve invested in those little suckers! If you have spent so much money on them, it makes sense to get as much use out of your rubber stamps as possible. Well, I’ve come to your rescue, with 6 Creative Ideas for Using Rubber Stamps, that aren’t just your standard stamp on paper. (*I wrote that article as part of a paid collaboration with eBay.)

I love the idea shown above: to stamp polymer clay with a rubber stamp to create an impression. So pretty!

Do you have any new ideas for how to use rubber stamps?

Here’s another creative project I made with rubber stamps: Make Custom Stamped T-shirts

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If you are a rubber stamper, you are probably familiar with the wonder of embossing powder! It’s a powder that you apply to a stamped (or wet) surface, and then heat with an embossing gun to melt it into a pretty, shiny finish. You’re probably familiar with how to use embossing powder for cards, but have you ever thought about all the other ways to use embossing powder?

Over at eBay*, I have written a guide for 7 Creative Ways to Use Embossing Powder. My favorite idea is to dip plain office brads in embossing powder to create decorative enameled brads. (*I wrote that article as part of a paid collaboration with eBay.)

Do you have any good ideas for how to use embossing powder creatively?

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Image by flickr user Constanza. Licensed via Creative Commons.

We live in a use-it-up and throw-it-out society. Because of the low cost of creating more and more goods, most of us are guilty of shopping more when we could be reducing and reusing. (As an avid fan of the dollar store, I am all too aware of the level of my own personal consumerism!).

For rubber stampers, one item that gets used up frequently is an ink pad. They dry out, you want a new color, etc. etc. Well, over at eBay*, I have written an article with ideas on How to Reuse an Ink Pad. One of my ideas is to take the dry ink pad out and alter the case (similar to the image above, which is actually an altered Altoid tin, but the idea would work just as well for dry ink pads). (*I wrote that article as part of a paid collaboration with eBay.)

Can you think of some good ways to reuse dry ink pads? What do you think about the ideas I came up with?

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I’ve been really focused on crochet lately. Last year, I started my first afghan, and I quickly got hooked (ha ha, get it?) on crocheting afghans! I just finished my 11th afghan last week, and I’m already halfway done with my 12th. Scroll down below to get a glimpse of my most recent afghan.

After I spent over $100 on my first afghan, I realized that I would not be able to keep making them if they cost that much. So, I started looking for cheaper sources of yarn, and I was thrilled when I found bags of yarn at my local Goodwill for about $7. I was able to get enough yarn to complete an afghan for about $30, which was much more reasonable! Of course, since I like to use neon yarn in my afghans, I still end up buying a few brand new skeins once in awhile.

Over at eBay*, I have come up with 9 Ways to Save Money on Knitting and Crochet. I use several of these methods, and I look forward to trying a few more of them! (*I wrote that article as part of a paid collaboration with eBay.)

So, ready to see my most recent afghan? Check it out (you can click on the right side of the photo to scroll through my album):

And here's my 11th #epicafghan – already started on the twelfth! #crochettherapy

A post shared by Heather Mann (@dollarcraft) on May 7, 2017 at 6:42pm PDT

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Did you hear that I’m making a wreath every day? Today I made a paper collage wreath created out of  mixed media pages from one of my journals, then punched into star shapes. I love how it turned out – it has a happy, colorful quality that also evokes graffiti and found objects. If you have some scrap paper and spare art supplies, you can make this wreath! Read on to find out how:

Wreath a Day #2: Mixed Media Paper Star Wreath

This article contains affiliate links.

Supplies Used:

I used supplies I already had in my stash, but your stash will vary. Regardless, you can make colorful mixed-media pages with stuff you already have on hand, or with a few items from the dollar store. Read my related article: How to Find Art Journaling Supplies at the Dollar Store.

*Items with an asterisk can be found at the dollar store

• Watercolor paper*
• Watercolor paints*
• EK Success Large Star Punch
• 10×10″ Piece of card stock
• Markers*
• White pen* (Use a White-Out pen from the dollar store)
• Glue* (I used Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue)
• Scissors*

1. Creating Mixed Media Papers:

Last spring, I took a mixed media art journaling class from my locally owned art & craft store. In the class, I learned how to use Ranger Dylusions Ink Sprays (SO MUCH FUN), which are water-based pigment sprays that work like watercolor paints. In the class, we ripped several pages out of our journals to use to clean up our inks while we worked on our journals. Then, we saved each page to use for later.

If you are creating your own mixed media pages from scratch, simply

1. Cover a couple pages of watercolor paper with your favorite colors of watercolor paint. Make sure to use several different colors.
2. Let the watercolored pages dry completely. (Use a hairdryer to speed up the drying process, if you are impatient.)
3. Doodle and write over the watercolored areas with marker. Add additional details with a white gel pen (or one of those White Out-style correction pens from the dollar store).
4. You can also add any other types of embellishment you can think of, including paint splatter, smearing, paint daubs (see the red dots on the yellow page in the photo above? I used bingo marker pens from the dollar store to make those), or rubber stamped images.

Don’t worry if you think the page looks ugly, or a section of a page isn’t the best. Once you punch the paper, each star becomes a work of art. As you can see in the photo above, my pages weren’t all that impressive.

2. Next, punch out the stars.

I like to remove the bottom cover from my paper punch and punch it upside-down so I can see the paper and I can position the shape to punch out the best-looking section of the paper. Punch one side of the paper, then trim away the jagged paper to cut the next section of the paper.

3. Create a wreath form

Since this wreath is just made from paper, I decided to create my own “wreath form” with a piece of card stock. I folded a large square piece of paper into quarters, then cut an arc shape out of the corner, and a hole in the middle.

As you can see, my wreath form isn’t perfectly round. I didn’t mind that for this particular wreath.

4. Glue stars to the wreath form

This step is pretty self-explanatory! One thing to think about is layering your less-favorite stars onto the wreath first, as you will be gluing other stars overlapping them. Spread the different colors of stars evenly around the wreath.

I had a lot of stars left. They are so neat! I made sure to save them all (as well as the background papers I punched out) for a future mixed media project. Maybe I’ll add them to my art journal.

I hope this project has inspired you to make something today! You can use some of the techniques explained here to create your own unique artistic wreath.

See my other wreaths here.

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Today I would like to show you how I took my favorite gift wrap from the holiday season and re-purposed it into a new wreath! I used stuff I got at the dollar store, and things I already had in my craft stash to make a cute and funny wreath that I’m excited to hang up in my office. Do you have extra gift wrap with a cute design that would make a great wreath? Then read on for instructions on how to transform your gift wrap into a simple and fun wreath project.

Note: This post contains affiliate links to the products I used, in case you want to shop for them.

Wreath a Day: #1

I bought this winter taco gift wrap on the first day it was for sale (for $2 a roll) at Target. I had to have it — who doesn’t love tacos? And I get sick of the samey-samey holiday gift wrap. I instantly gravitated toward the cute tacos wearing scarves and their avocado compadres. (I admit, I am a bit of a gift warp hoarder… it’s hard for me to pass on cute gift wrap.)

My favorite gifts under the Christmas tree were definitely wrapped in this taco paper! So when I went looking for supplies in my craft hoarder’s paradise, ahem, I mean my garage, I was immediately drawn to this paper once again. I grabbed it, and some dollar store stickers (that I also found in my CHP — yeah, Craft Hoarder’s Paradise), and went to town.

How to Make a Recycled Gift Wrap Wreath:

Supplies Needed:

• A foam wreath form, $1
• Roll of gift wrap, on hand or $1
• A sheet of card stock, on hand
• Stickers, on hand or $1
• Glue (I used Aleene’s Clear Tacky Glue)
• Hot glue gun and Glue Sticks
• Baker’s twine, on hand or $1
• Ribbon, on hand or $1

Total cost: $1 and up

Step 1: Cut out all the cute things printed on your gift wrap.

In my case, I carefully cut out tacos wearing scarves, avocados, and tomatoes. Your gift wrap probably has something different on it, and that’s okay! Notice what colors are used in your gift wrap, and pick one of the colors that you’d like to highlight when you choose your card stock. I chose to use a red striped card stock I had on hand.

Step 2: Glue the gift wrap cut outs to the card stock, leaving enough space around them to cut them out and provide a card stock border.

Alternately, if you don’t want a card stock border, you can skip step 1, and glue gift wrap directly to the card stock, then cut out the figures in one step.

The card stock IS important to provide stability to the gift wrap, which is lightweight and too floppy to glue directly to the wreath.

Step 3: Cut out the figures from the card stock, leaving a small border.

Step 4: Cut strips of wrapping paper about 1″ wide (doesn’t have to be exact).

Step 5: Secure gift wrap strip to the foam wreath form with a dab of hot glue. Wrap the strips around the wreath, overlapping as you go, to cover the entire wreath form. When you reach the end of a strip of gift wrap, glue it to the wreath, then start a new strip where the old one ends.

And, the wreath form is all covered! Now it’s time to decorate it.

Step 6: Tie a piece of baker’s twine to the top of the wreath for a hanger. Then tie a piece of ribbon into a bow to put on the top of the wreath and glue it in place with hot glue.

Step 6: Prearrange the pieces of the wreath to decide where they will go, then when you are happy with their placement, glue them into place with hot glue.

Step 7: Add dollar store stickers to the rest of the wreath to finish it.

Then you’re done! This wreath is a great lightweight wreath to use for home decor, or put in your cubicle at work.

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What do you give the friend, neighbor, or co-worker who is mostly naughty (but maybe a little bit nice)? How about this funny dollar store craft: a Santa’s Coal Wreath, featuring all dollar store materials and candies. I posted the instructions over in my column at eBay: [make Santa’s Coal Wreath]

Project Materials:

• Santa candy, $1
• Coal candy, $1
• Paper plates, $1
• Red crepe paper, $1
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks, on hand

Total cost: $4

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I went a-shoppin’ at the dollar store, and I came home with 2 bucks worth of supplies to make this super cute Woodland Animal Origami wreath! This project is super easy and cute, and is currently adorning my front door. Learn how to make it for yourself: [Woodland Origami Wreath]

Supplies Needed:

• Flat Christmas Wreath, $1
• Woodland Animal Origami Kit, $1
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks, on hand

Total cost: $2

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