☀️ Cheap to Chic: Summer DIY Home Decor from Dollar Tree supplies! Summer ideas on a budget!

We are saving some big bucks with the summer Dollar Tree DIYs. Hello everyone. My name is Courtney. Let's get crafting. For this project you could do two things with it. Number one, it's a great hostess gift idea. Maybe you're going somewhere for the 4th of July, a barbecue or over to a friend's house for the afternoon to swim. This is a great quick little gift to pull together or you just need some summer decor in your home. It's great for that too. I'm starting with one of these chalkboard easels from Dollar Tree. And well, I'm painting off, or not painting it off, I'm taping off the inside because I'm a messy painter and I want to paint the frame a yellow. So I get it all taped off and then grab some sunshine yellow paint from Apple Barrel and painted the entire frame. Once that was painted and I set it aside to dry, I grabbed one of these, I'm going to call it a lemon slice, it may be an orange slice, it could be a lime slice, I'm not really sure. But Dollar Tree had these years ago and I am still going through them so I grabbed this so I could use it up. And I also grabbed my Thule paint markers. I've recently started using this brand and I absolutely love it. There's very minimal bleeding, especially when you're using it on wood, so I really do like this brand. And I'm just going to color in this lemon slice with two shades of yellow and then I'll be ready to move to my next step. Now it was time to put my decal on my little sign. So I did use my Cricut to just print out a quick little graphic already in Cricut Design Space, but if you don't have a Cricut, no worries. You can certainly grab yourself some stickers, you could put scrapbook paper here, you could even chalkboard write it yourself with some chalk markers, lots of options. And I attached my decal to it and then the last step was to hot glue down my little slice to the top corner. And this is the first part of this DIY, now let's move into the next step. Part 2 of this project, I just grabbed one of these $3 trays from Dollar Tree and I took some white paint from Waverly and I just painted all of the sides of the tray until it was full coverage. You definitely could do a more distressed look if that's kind of your vibe, but I just painted it until it was full coverage. Then I took some lemon vinyl, this was actually when I collaborated with Expressions Vinyl last year, so I had custom designed this lemon vinyl. But if you don't have this, guess what? You can grab some scrapbook paper, that would be perfect for this. Or you could even hand paint your designs on here as well, totally up to you. Add stickers and just Mod Podge, so lots of options of how to get a lemon base for this. But then once that was done, this tray was finished and now I was ready to pull this whole thing together. To pull it together, I grabbed 6 lemons along with the, I believe it was the size large glass canister from Walmart, it was like $9.87. Put those in there and then put it on my tray with the sign. If you're giving it as a gift, you could definitely add a cute wooden spoon, maybe some sugar and some cute cups. But there you go, a cute gift idea, also a great idea for home decor. This is my current spring centerpiece and it is time to swap it out with more summer items. So I started by taking everything off of my little wooden tray, this came from HomeGoods quite a while ago. And then I have one of those large glass jars from Walmart, it was about $9. I picked up these baseballs from Academy and they had, you know, the Academy stamp on it along with, you know, where it was made, all that good stuff. So I just took some acetone and easily wiped all of that print off of the balls so that there was nothing left on there. The last thing I needed to do once I got all of this text off the balls was just to put them inside of my glass jar. So I just arranged them in there and then it was time to decorate my tray, grabbing some of my former projects that I've made in past years to finish it off. For this project, you want to grab two of these crafter squares, I'm going to call them reforms. Some of the wood craft rings and some fabric. Dollar Tree has tons of cute fabric. This is watermelon, you could find lemons, ice cream cones would be really cute as well. You'll also need a 12 inch wood round. I got mine in a pack from Amazon, but you can find them at Dollar Tree, other craft stores as well. First thing I did was get all the wrinkles out of my fabric. I just used my mini heat press and then we need to attach the fabric to our wood round. So I'm just going to start by making sure to pull the fabric really really tight, kind of overlapping in some places, but you just want to make sure that it's going to be nice and smooth. I did not put any glue on the other side, just on this back part where I glued the fabric on, and then trim off all of that extra fabric. Once the fabric was trimmed, I did go back in with my glue gun just to get it all smooshed down so there was no loose fabric sticking up anywhere. Then you want to take this and you want to glue it down on top of one of these, I don't know what they are, MDF I think, wreath forms, glue it down on top. Once that's done, you kind of have this tray looking thing, and of course you could leave it like this if you wanted to, but we're going to go a little further. Now taking these wood craft rings, I'm going to space them out so I kind of know where they are going to go, and I'm just going to start hot gluing them down onto this wreath form. Once they are hot glued down, I will attach the top just again using some hot glue, putting it on the top of each of these little wooden craft rings, and putting that down. Now I left mine natural at first, but then I was like, you know what, I'm going to paint them green. So I did go in and give them a good coat of green paint, and then this little display tray was finished. Again, you could make so many different variations of this, it's a really cute little tray. What you'll need for this DIY, a Dollar Tree wooden tray, a piece of wood, and a little wooden summer themed wind chime. This one is watermelon themed, but you know the drill, pick what you like, lemons, ice cream, patriotic, totally up to you. I started by taking my miter shears, but they weren't really doing the job, then I grabbed my tin snips, snipped the words off the top, then I decided the slice needed to be trimmed down just a little bit, so using my tin snips I did do that, and gave it a good sanding to get all the little rough bits off. From there I took some white paint and I painted that white piece of wood along with the tray white, then the watermelon piece got the rind painted green, and the inside of it painted red. Here I grabbed some of these rainbow colored popsicle sticks that I had in my stash, this was just going to be a lot easier for me, if you don't have colored ones you can grab plain ones and then paint them to match whatever theme cart that you want to make. So what I did is I wanted to trim the popsicle sticks so that there were stripes going along this flat piece of wood, and then on the front I wanted the little, I don't know what you want to call it, scallop look on the front, so I figured out how I needed to trim them down to get the look that I wanted. Once I got all the pieces trimmed using my miter shears, I hot glued down the red and green pieces to the piece of wood, and then on the front side I glued down my little rounded scallop edges just using some hot glue. I grabbed four dowel rods and glued them into the corners of this little wooden crate, and then I decided that I kind of wanted this to tilt back a little bit, not tilt forward but tilt back, so I trimmed off some of the dowel rods on the back, and I also decided that I needed to add a little more support to this, so I took a dowel rod, made a little support beam, that's the back of it, and then I glued the dowel rods on the front, those are a little bit taller than the ones in the back, and then I took some hot glue, glued the top on, and it was good to go. From there I grabbed my little watermelon slice, I took my paint marker, and added the little black seeds, and hot glued that directly to the front, and then this was the cutest little candy dish. You definitely could add a little sign to it, and again, make any kind of theme that you want to make. Here is a very fun DIY. You want to grab some of these chopping mats from Dollar Tree, along with some paint markers, and what you can do is just create a fun placemat that you can use, maybe if you have a pool or a table outside, this can just kind of be your go-to placemat, it's great kids craft, if you have grandkids visiting, or just for your kids at home, and you could also print out designs, if you're not much of an artist, which I am not, but I had fun doing this anyway, you can print out designs on your printer, and put it underneath this placemat, that's what we're calling it, and then sketch it just that way as well, so you don't have to freehand it, but this is just such a fun little thing to do, to make your summer a little extra special. You can't have summer without ice cream, so starting with four of these Dollar Tree wooden dice, I'm going to paint them a nice little turquoise color, then grabbing one of the wooden Dollar Tree canvases, I'm going to paint this, the inside of it, I'm going to paint with white, and then the frame of it, I will also paint it with that turquoise paint that I used for the wooden dice. The next thing I needed to do was make this super fun, and I am going to add some sprinkles, so I got a lot of colors that I liked, and I simply went in and did sprinkles on this, added my four wooden dice to the bottom of this as feet, just using some hot glue, and now I've got a fun ice cream tray that I can use all summer long. Now this one is an oldie, but a goodie from the DIY Vault, you want to pick up one of these wooden rounds, this is an 18 inch wooden round from Home Depot, and cut it in half. I'm going to do this into a lemon slice, so I need some yellow paint, some white paint to make that happen, and all I did was just find an image of a lemon slice, and sketch out first with my pencil, so I knew exactly where I wanted to paint, and then I just went to work, I did the rind kind of a darker yellow, and then did white and a lighter yellow on the inside portion of the slice. Once it was all painted and good to go, I did seal it with some liquid wax from Amy Howard, got that on there, and the final step was to screw on my two handles that I picked up from Hobby Lobby, and that's it, you've got an awesome lemon wooden tray. And of course the other half got turned into a watermelon slice, so for this one I followed the same steps, I ended up using seven different colors on this watermelon, so the rind is kind of a thicker and darker green, then the next one in is a little bit of a lighter green, of course the center of the watermelon is red, with the black seeds, I also have a little white highlight there next to the red, and then on the very outside of the rind, I did go in with two more shades of green, kind of a brighter green and a darker green, and just alternated those, so I'm just going to kind of let you watch this get painted, and see how it turned out. We're turning this Dollar Tree Christmas tag into a piece of lemon themed decor, that would be perfect for trays, or just on a bookshelf, something like that. So I started by flipping it over, and I did paint the back with some brown wax, and then I also did paint the front side with brown wax as well. Then taking some vinyl that I cut out a design with, I went in with paint, and I just stenciled on my design that says lemonade, and it's got a lemon on it, and I went in and just got that all painted. When that was finished, I took a washer and painted it yellow, and I stuck that at the top of the tag where the hole was, just to kind of add a little something extra, and then I just strung a piece of twine through it, and this little tag was finished. For me, summer always reminds me of s'mores, so this is a very easy DIY. I created this design, and printed it on a full sticker shipping label. Once that was done, I grabbed this bucket from Dollar Tree, and wanted to add a little trim to it to kind of keep with the s'mores vibe, so I took some white twine that I had, and I just hot glued that at the very top. Then I took a piece of brown, it was kind of like leather that I had in my stash, put that underneath it to kind of represent marshmallows and chocolate. Then the last step was just to take my sticker, cut it out, and stick it on this bucket, and then you can fill it with all kinds of yummy s'mores treats, easily pick it up, carry it where you need it to go, and have a great, fun summer. I've got two fun mason jar crafts for you, so grab yourself a mason jar from the Dollar Tree or wherever. This first one, I am painting the jar this tannish color. Once that gets painted, I did end up doing about two coats on there. I took a nice, light kind of turquoise color, and what you want to do with this is, at the very top, you want to make it kind of look like it's drippy ice cream. So I just painted the top, kind of made some drips here and there, let that dry really, really good, and then I grabbed my colored glue sticks. You guys know I love colored glue sticks. So I wanted to make sprinkles on this, and now you definitely could use faux sprinkles if you wanted to. You guys know I love to use those as well, and just glue those on there, but you know what? I'm going with the colored glue stick option. And I get a lot of questions about, oh, do you have a separate glue gun? So here's the rundown on colored glue sticks. I do have a separate glue gun for colored glue sticks. I actually have three. So I've got one for the glitter glues that are, you know, the glitter glue sticks. I've got one for darker colors, the browns and the blacks, and then I've got one for lighter colors. It really doesn't make that much of a difference. I just have collected glue guns over the years, so that's why I do that. Now, how do I not waste the glue? Well, I do cut my glue sticks in half, so that's one way that you can do it, but I do also squirt any of the extra glue out when I want to change colors, and then I throw that in my glue skillet. I know you guys have seen that, that I use all the time for florals. So that's kind of the rundown as far as changing out the glue. Definitely don't be afraid to cut it, but this turned into a very cute ice cream themed straw holder. And the other mason jar craft, we're going to turn this into watermelon themed. Now, this one is very much from the vault, if you can't tell from the video, but again, for this one, I did end up doing about five colors. So the bottom part was green. I kind of followed how I did that watermelon tray using the same colors. Then I did a lighter green stripe above that, a white stripe, and then of course the red with the black seeds, and then filled it in with some straws. Here's another DIY you can make perfect for summer entertaining. So for this one, I am using some of this Arteza outdoor acrylic paint and a 12 inch wood round, again from Amazon, and I am sketching out a beach ball on this. Now, the reason I like this Arteza outdoor paint is because it already has the built-in sealer, so I do not have to take the extra step to seal it. I will definitely link everything in today's video down below if you have any questions. Now, I'm going to paint on a beach ball, but you could do so many different versions. You could do a life preserver, you could make a sign, you could do fruit slices, whatever you want, but these are basically fun. Either you could use it as a charger where you put plates on them, you could put candles on them, whatever you want to, but it's just a fun little decor piece that you can make. So once I painted my beach ball, I did decide I wanted to go in with a paint marker and just add a few little details just to kind of make it, I don't know, pop off? I guess that's the word I want to use. But once it was finished, it was so stinking cute, and I really think a whole little set of summer-themed chargers would be so cute for summer entertaining. That's going to wrap up today's video. Let me know down below which one of these projects was your favorite. Also let me know what summer plans do you have. Are you going on a fun trip? Are you chilling out at home? I would love to know what you're up to this summer. Thank you so much for watching. Here are some more videos you might want to check out, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!