One of my favorite things to do with the kids is learning how to use what we have to make beautiful things! Limiting how much we spend on decor and craft supplies teaches us how to be creative and resourceful, and the results are doubly satisfying!
Here are 11 Christmas crafts for under $5 that we enjoyed making this year!
1. Stocking Ladder
My husband made this for me by gluing and brad nailing two 7 ft. pieces of quarter round molding to dowels cut into 18″ long sections for the rungs. It was very inexpensive to put together and can be stained or painted whatever color you’d like to match your decor.
2. Tea Towel Stockings
This is our first year doing stockings, and with eight people in our family, I quickly started thinking of more budget-friendly ways to make some after seeing how much a new one can cost!
Enter tea towels! They can be found for a $1 a piece at the Dollar Store in a variety of festive colors and designs. One tea towel makes one stocking.
Fold in half lengthwise, wrong sides together, using the fold for the straight side of the stocking. Use newspaper to cut out a simple stocking pattern that fits on half a tea towel. (The stocking will be the skinnier, primitive kind because that’s all that fits on tea towels, but I like those better anyway!). Sew a straight line down and around the foot. Turn right side out, and attach a ribbon to the top for hanging!
3. Tree Branch Ornaments
Brad cut the trunk of a dead tree into slices and drilled holes through the tops for us to turn them into Christmas ornaments for next to nothing! Orange, black, and white paint, a few fabric scraps from Oma, and a little twine turned the dead maple into whimsical little snowmen to hang from the tree branches this year.
4. Clothespin Snowflakes
For these ornaments, we just pulled apart clothespins I haven’t used in twelve years, and glued the backs together for each tip of the snowflake!
5. Felt Applique Pillow Cover
Felt is one of my favorite fabrics to use when practicing hand stitching with the girls! It’s fairly stationary, and you can easily see your stitches, especially if you use thread in a contrasting color. It’s also super inexpensive and readily available at the Dollar Store.
We took the easy route and used our old, premade cushion covers from Ikea for this super simple, festive pillow that introduces the art of applique and the whip stitch! Full instructions, here.
6. Tea Towel Pillow Covers
Dollar Store tea towels are the perfect size to make easy covers for Ikea’s rectangular pillows! All you need is 2 tea towels and thread. Take one of the tea towels, cut it in half for an envelope style opening on the back, and sew the wrong sides together. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, for a total of $4!
7. Fabric Scraps Garland
Scrap fabric garlands were a hit with the girls (and their kittens )! We made them by cutting fabric scraps (that weren’t much use for anything else) into 6-7″ strips, and tied them around a long piece of twine.
Each one is uniquely beautiful, as the girls chose their own colors and patterns.
They gave their garlands to their cats, but this one was set aside for the stair railing.
They cost nothing to make since we used what we already had, and kept little fingers productively occupied making beautiful things.
8. Popsicle Stick Calico Critter House
9. Pinecone Mini Trees
To make the miniature pinecone tree on the bathroom counter, we pulled the scales off a handful of pinecones and hot glued them onto a cone-shaped piece of styrofoam from the Dollar Store. The trunk is a small piece of leftover dowel inserted into the bottom of the styrofoam cone, and the basket base was something I already had on hand.
10. Peanut and Cranberry Garlands For The Birds
All you need to make these garlands are a bag of peanuts, cranberries, a needle, and thread! You can add popcorn in there, too, if you like. The kids had loads of fun making up their own patterns and decorating our porch with pretty food for the birds.
11. Outdoor Christmas Containers
A hike in a forest with a pair of clippers is all you need to create a simple, festive display outside your front door! To keep the greens fresh, we inserted pails of water into containers I already had, and then arranged the branches inside. We clipped a mix of cedar, pine, spruce, juniper, dogwood, and birch branches. Setting pots on old stumps lend a rustic vibe to the vignette.
Tell me your favorite, frugal Christmas crafts!
