Cheap Christmas Tree DIYs That Look Expensive
I loveeee decorating for Christmas and every year I have this big vision for the most insanely gorgeous Christmas, and I pin all these beautiful ideas and see bloggers’ inspo that I just DROOL over, but I soon discover each year that most of these talented home designers are spending probably a thousand or thousands of dollars on their decor. The Christmas trees that actually look real and flocked and non-plasticky tend to be at least a few hundred dollars, and if you want everything to really look nice and not tacky, the rest can be pretty challenging to find if you’re on a budget.
This year I went on a mission to find a solution. Here are 3 DIYs that are all under $15 and still look like you paid more! It’s possible to get creative and keep it even cheaper, but my goal here was to make everything look classy, and mimic those high end designer trees, not just to make it as cheap as possible. Still, this entire set up cost about $90-$110, including the tree, depending on what sales you can find!
The Tree
I ended up getting this tree from Michaels (#132) for $60. If you’re reading this on Black Friday, it’s on sale for $50 right now!
There were cheaper options too (check out this one from Walmart for $22), but remember if it’s not pre-lit to add $15-$20 for lights. I went with the Michael’s #132 because I thought it looked really real considering it’s price! I also liked this flocked on from Walmart, but realized it would end up being about the same price after adding lights and wasn’t sure if the heavy flocking would look real or not!
The tree was super easy to put together — it was just three parts that you stack on top of one another!
Wooden Garland
I’ve always wanted a wooden garland, but they are so expensive! This one from Crate & Barrel is $23, but it’s only 9 feet long, so you would need about 3 of them to cover a full sized tree, which makes it more like $70.
I actually struggled to find a cheaper solution for this until I found this set on Amazon! It comes with 1105 wooden beads of different sizes, adding up to 28 feet of garland, and it was only $15 (a much nicer number for my wallet).
It did take a while to string over 1000 beads, but it was worth it. The kit comes with string enough for the first 13 feet, and for the rest I used sewing thread I had on hand, and used a needle to more easily/quickly string the beads.
Linen Tassle Tree Skirt
Tree skirts totally can be affordable, but I really wanted a nice linen one with natural looking tassels — something that didn’t look/feel cheap. Most nice tree skirts I’ve found are around $30-60, but this one cost me $10!
I picked out some linen fabric from Joann’s that was on sale for $7/yard and some cream string for $2.
I measured the length from the tree to where I wanted the outer edge of the circle to lay and it was 13 inches, so I cut a 15 inch circle and sliced a line up the center! I finished the edges on my sewing machine, but if you don’t know how to sew or don’t have a sewing machine, it would be fine to leave raw for one holiday or you can look for a material that doesn’t fray, like velvet!
The tassels are super easy to make — just roll the string around your hand in a circle, then tie a string in a knot around the top of the circle, then cut the circle so that they are straight pieces! The video above shows how to do this.
Minimal Star Tree Topper
This was a total experiment but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! I just hot glued some thin dowels together and then covered them in glue and glitter! Then I used craft wire to make the spiral that holds in on the tree. The whole thing cost about $8.
The dowels I purchased were a little long so I snapped them in half — if you do this, you might want to sand the edges so you don’t get any splinters!
Glass Ornaments
These ornaments were on sale at Michael’s: $5 for 8 glass ornaments. Seemed like a steal! I got this color and this color. They do not come with ornament hangers, so we got some at Target for $1.
Let me know if you try any of these! If you’ve already decorated, hover over any image and save it to Pinterest for next year!
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