Little glass lanterns and candle pedestals from Dollar Tree

Found these cast plaster candle pedestals at Dollar Tree a couple of weeks ago.  I only bought 2 black ones, but they had white also; BUT the white ones had very noticeable ‘seams’ so I decided to skip them.  (you could easily sand down the protruding part of the seams with sand paper though)  As you can see, these chip super easily.  I was planning to repaint mine, so I didn’t really care.  The new paint will cover the chips, and a coat of varnish will help prevent future chips.

I bought a few of these little turquoise glass candle lanterns the same day.  They fit perfectly atop the pedestals, but I probably won’t use them for such a predictable purpose.

I’ve used some similar frosted white glass lanterns (also from DT) for these upcycled fencing candle chandeliers that I made recently.  I did not permanently attach the lanterns to the fencing, so they are easily removable for transport.  You can use regular or battery operated tea lights in the.

Here’s what I did with my two black pedestals.  Added another coat of black paint, tied on an old key with a piece of sheer black ribbon; glued a folded sheet music ‘rosette’ to the top of the pedestal; then glued on the plastic skulls.  (from DT)

I’m really TRYING to not stockpile so many craft supplies, and use up what I have on hand.  But if you shop DT as often as I do, you KNOW that if you don’t buy ‘as many as you think you will ever need’ of an item that catches your eye; you will never find them there again.  MOST of the time.  Every so often the desirable item will be something that they will be regularly stocking . . .  but NEVER ‘expect; to find it again and you will never be disappointed.

Forgot to take pictures of these ’rounded bottom’ DT glass lanterns before I embellished them.  They had several colors, I bought one clear and one turquoise.  Had some very OLD DT mini jar candles is little ‘shot glasses’ that fit perfectly inside these; then I added a few inches of colored gravel (also from DT!) and tied on a few shells with baker’s twine of jute.  For the shells, I glue a small piece of the string to each shell, the bundle them and tie them on with the longer strip.  And yes, DT does sell jute and baker’s twine; but I think I got the aqua baker’s twine elsewhere.

Did you notice these little jars of shells in the display photo?  YEP!  Got them at DT too.  I added the limpet shell to the cork lid.

I filled some vintage glass spice jars with ‘beach glass’ and tied sheer ribbon around the necks.  (no lids for the spice jars).  The beach glass is the last little bit that I had left over from YEARS ago when DT carried it.  I probably bought FIFTY bags of assorted colors of the beach glass from DT, and used it to make beach glass wreaths.

The beach glass (or Sea glass, if you prefer) wreaths are TRULY a ‘Labor of Love’.  Each one took at least 20 hours to construct, and contains nearly a dozen layers of carefully positioned and fitted together glass.  I’d guess there are at least a thousand pieces of glass per wreath.  I used tacky glue to adhere mine.  Hot glue would never hold up under the weight of the glass.

Uh-oh!! The sun is coming out!  I might have to put on my rain boots and get outside and rake up all the pine needles in my yard!

 

Little stuffed pumpkins – Target Dollar Spot

Found these cute little stuffed fabric pumpkins at Target Dollar Spot.

They are fairly small; fit in the palm of your hand.  I’m not sure how many different colors they were originally available in.  By the time I found them, these two colors and black velvet were all that was left in stock.  The stems are plastic.  The turquoise and black pumpkins are velvet fabric; the green one a faux suede.

They really were just fine to use ‘as is’, but you KNOW that is never good enough for me!  I had some black fabric leaves in my Halloween supply stash; attached the leaves with some fine black craft wire, strung through the leaf and twisted around the stem.  Then the extra length of wire was wrapped around a pencil to create a curly vine.

Since I didn’t have any brown leaves to add to the pale green pumpkin, I had to come up with something else to embellish it.  I’m really trying to NOT buy a bunch more craft supplies, and use only what I have on hand.  But of course, you can buy fake leaves in just about ANY color at any craft store if you wanted some.

I had some ‘grapevine’ wire; which is wire covered with brown paper that looks like grapevine.  I twisted on a small piece of the grapevine wire and curled the loose ends, as I had done on the others.  It still needed a ‘little something’, so I added a pretty golden brown sheer bow.

The turquoise bottle came from Target’s Dollar Spot too.  I embellished it with some stick on crystals that I had on hand.  The glitter pumpkin is one from Dollar Tree.  I replaced the fake plastic stem with a real wood one (piece of a tree branch) and painted it aqua and glittered it.  To prevent excess glitter ‘shed’, I spray on a coat of clear varnish as the finishing touch.

These small pumpkins would be perfect to use at individual place settings on your Thanksgiving table.

Dressed up Dollar Tree skeleton

I forgot to take a picture of this one before I dressed her up, but these are the basic plastic skeletons that they have at Dollar Tree every year.

I made her an orange tulle tutu, and tied an sheer orange ribbon around her waist.

To make the tutu, I just do a running stitch along the folded edge of the tulle; then gather it up to size and stitch it in place.

The bow in the back is a cute little extra.

The collar is a felt spider web I had on hand.  I slit it, cut out the very center and one section (to make it curve) and glued it back together.  The little spider buttons I had on hand also.

With one section removed, when I glued it back together, it curved down and fit over her shoulders nicely.

I made the crown out of black paper, added a spider web sticker and one of the spider buttons.  The crown fit over the loop for hanging on top of her head.

Took no more than 15 minutes to dress her up.

Dollar Tree Halloween Decor: Bird skeletons

How cute are these little bird skeletons I found at Dollar Tree?!?!  I grabbed a few of them, not knowing WHAT I was going to DO with them; but I just HAD to have them.

I ended up just putting them out in my Halloween display at the antique mall ‘as is’.

I thought about giving them a crown, but I put crowns of EVERYTHING!  It’s beginning to feel a tad redundant!

I really wish I had bought MORE of them, and set a few aside for next year when I’ll have time to start on them earlier and alter them somehow.

All that I did by, sold.

Look what I just saw on Pinterest?!?!  Practically the SAME bird!!  This one is made from resin, and  is a Bethany Lowe design with a $109.95 price tag!?!?

(I actually like the ones from DT better.  The hollow chest cavity is more realistic looking.  But I sure do love that top hat he’s sporting!)

Looat I found at Dollar Tree!

Little black wire Halloween trees!  Just one per package, but still not a bad price.  Haven’t decided what to do with them just yet.  They also had ALL the stuff it set up an entire “Halloween village”, like the Christmas village stuff.  You could paint these ANY color.  I might cover mine with black GLITTER!

It was utterly IMpossible to get a picture of these without a glare from the flash!  They look MUCH prettier in person.  They had a few different styles of these ‘Mercury glass looking’ votive holders and in silver as well as the gold, which I bought.

These will be pretty for a Christmas table centerpiece or even WEDDING or anniversary table decor!

Pumpkin bobble heads at Dollar Tree

This is about the time of year that I try to frequent my local Dollar Tree stores more often, looking for Christmas supplies.  The good  stuff goes REALLY fast, so if you snooze, you LOSE!  White and gold are ‘the’ colors for Christmas this year, at DT at least!

They USED to wait until the day after Halloween to put the Christmas stuff out, but it has been appearing earlier the last few years.  As soon as some of the Halloween stocked shelves empty, they start putting out MARKED DOWN Christmas stuff left from last year.  I’ve found some really great deals on mark down!

I was just ‘running in real quick’ to buy some new hair clips on the way home from the movies (Gravity in 3D!  It was amazing!) and spotted these little guys on one of the front displays:

How cute are they?!?!?  And I’d been into other DT stores in my area recently and NOT seen these in any of those others?!?!  They also had a witch and a mummy, but they were not as cute as the punkin heads!

Seriously, almost cute enough to use ‘as is’.  But of course you KNOW I can never do that!  They actually remind me of one the style of my favorite modern folk artist, Dan DiPaulo.

The paint was a little sloppy in a few places; the orange from the base was on the boots in a few places, so I painted over that to neaten it up.  Then I glittered the heads!

Let my glitter glue dry overnight, then shake to get any loose glitter off; then a quick coat of clear spray to keep the glitter from ‘shedding’ too much during use.

This cloche made from a DT beverage glass and thrifted knob fit over them perfectly!

Dollar Tree cookies make over!

Not MY idea, but a great one that I found in bloggeritaville and had to share!

Pretty cute. eh?!?!?  If I hadn’t mentioned cookies in the post title, would you have EVER guessed that that is what these are made of?!?

This is the package that the cookies came from. Now I don’t usually peruse the cookie aisle when I go to Dollar Tree so I don’t know if we get these locally.

And these are the cookies that were used.  See the complete how to in the post by BLISSFUL ROOTS .  And you can see what she did with the same cookies for Christmas ornaments  HERE.

Eons ago I hand painted some McDonald cookies.  Do they even still have those?  In a little box like animal cookies, but in the McDonald’s characters shapes.  Here’s what I did to mine to preserve them for YEARS.

After painting you need to dry them out really well and crisp them back up.  Turn your oven on to it’s LOWEST temp.  While the oven heats up, spread your cookies out on a cookie sheet.  TURN THE OVEN OFF as soon as it heats up and put your sheet of cookies in for an hour or so.  The oven will stay warm enough to get ALL the moisture out of the cookies.

Immediately after removing your cookies from the oven, attach the string or ribbon for them to hang from and let the glue dry overnight.  The next day apply a couple of coats of clear varnish to the cookies, front and back.  You’ll notice that the first coat of varnish really soaks INTO the cookies.  That’s fine. and it really helps to strengthen them.

To preserve the cookies that Blissful Roots has shown us, you would want to varnish them BEFORE adding the glitter.  And remember, it’s a good idea to give ANY glittered item a coat of clear spray after your application glue is completely dry to help minimize ‘glitter shedding’.

I’d LOVE to see any variations that you come up with on ‘altered cookies’!

SERIOUSLY slim pickins at the Dollar Store!!!

I used to NEVER leave the dollar store empty-handed!  Lately though the picking have been really slim.  Slim to ZIPPO!!  I hardly ever have anything new to share here in the Dollar Diva blog, and it’s making me very SAD!!

Was hoping for some new items for fall, but it’s mostly the same old, same OLD stuff.  And it seems like the longer an item remains in stock, the poorer the quality becomes!

Case in point.  I went in to buy a few more of the feather crows they have every year.  Still have a few from a couple of years ago that I had stashed then couldn’t find, so I bought more; then found my stash.  The ones they have this year all look like they have MANGE!?!?  

The little chocolate truffle candles they first got in 4-5 years ago in very short supply.  I buy them mostly for display on the cupcake and dessert stands that I upcycle; but people always want to buy them so I started buying more and putting a price tag on them.  Last year they had HOARDS of them in stock, and several new ‘flavors’ too.  Glad I bought about 5 cases of them then because the ones they are getting in now, and seem to have year round; look like CRAP!!

  I did find some cute little ceramic glittered pumpkins earlier this month.

But there is nothing more that you can really DO to them.  I used to buy the plastic gourds and pumpkins and paint and glitter them.  These I can use ‘as is’; but I prefer to ‘alter’ my DT finds.  All I had to do to these was give them was spray on a coat of clear varnish to keep the glitter from shedding.

***These would be PERFECT to use for Thanksgiving table place-cards!   Just tie a little tag with the name written on it to the loop on the stem.

These black owls were nice.  Hoping that maybe next year they will make the crows like this, with velvet like bodies and just a few adorning feathers.  But all I could think of to do with the owls was add a crown.

And I did have to ‘work with their feet a bit’ to get them to stand up.  They kept falling over, until I got the feet bent ‘just so’.

These sets of magnetic frames are cute, but NOT very magnetic!  They wouldn’t even hold up a small piece of paper.  That’s okay though because I didn’t buy them for their magnetic use.  I’ll use them for some altered art projects; and probably paint them black or white.

These buttons will be great for some spring projects.  I bought several packages.

I bought these resin pumpkins to repaint, but I’m not liking how they turned out at ALL!  Will maybe paint them white or gold them glitter just  the outer most raised ribs. 

THAT’S IT!!!  That is ALL I have found at DT in MONTHS.  sigh.

So that leaves me wondering . . .  what do I do with this blog?!?!  Do I remain true to my original ‘mission statement’ for this blog and stick with ONLY posting about dollar store projects; potentially leaving it ti fizzle out and die due to lack of content???

Or do I ‘get with the times’ and start posting about ‘discount store finds’ and make overs?  Because now that I spend so little time perusing DT stores, I get out to Ross and Marshalls a lot more and am finding some pretty cool stuff there.  It just costs more than a dollar!  

I’d love to hear what direction you’d like to see this blog move in.

*Stick with Dollar Store finds no matter what.

OR

* Expand my posting repertoire to include ‘bargain finds’ from other sources also.  (which I have done occasionally in the past)

WHAT’S A DOLLAR DIVA TO DO?!?!?

TINY glitter skulls

I have NO IDEA what the intended use for these was.  Such a big package of them make me think they are for something specific though.  Forgot to take a picture before I started crafting with them.  Sorry!

I removed and used all the black skulls first.    These are small.  Trying to think of the best way to describe them so you ‘get’ how small they are.  They would easily fit inside a plastic Easter egg size.

All I did was give them a crown and a paper rosette collar.

Would be cute used at individual place settings for a Halloween dinner party.

I had just made a batch of small cloches, and these fit perfectly under them.

Seems I can NEVER have too may small cloches in my booth.  They always sell well!

This cloche had a pretty silver rim, so I matched the knob to the rim.

Ready to sell at Stars.

Simple pumpkin and gourd WELCOME.

Not MY idea, but from NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES blog, and worth sharing:

Click on the link to go to her blog for complete instructions.    Looks like she got her gourds at the craft store, but Dollar Tree has them too.