I am broke this year. Super broke! I also don’t have very many Christmas decorations because I moved last year, and purged everything before I did. Since I don’t have a lot of cash this year, I decided to try to make decorations out of stuff I already have on hand. Good thing I shopped at the dollar store last week and picked up some cool stuff! Just kidding!

Okay, I DID shop at the dollar store, but I didn’t pick up any ready-made decorations. Instead, I picked up a few things I thought were cool, and I am using them along with things I already have on hand to make some cute decorations.

The first project involves these cute green paper Christmas Tree Doilies I picked up: 20 doilies for $1. That’s five cents a doily.

Christmas Doily Swag Garland Thing

Project Materials:

• Package of doilies, $1
• Colored paper (construction or scrapbook), on hand
• glue, on hand
• yarn or ribbon, on hand

Total Cost: $1 (or, 20 cents for a garland that uses 4 doilies)

1. Cut paper to fit doily. I cut mine to 8″x8.5″

2. Glue doily to paper.

• Gluing tip: I used a glue stick. Apply with a light hand, especially if it’s one of those stiff/sticky glue sticks, or you’ll tear the doily. I used the edge of the glue stick and applied it in long strokes along each edge and in the middle. To affix to paper, smooth doily lightly out from center onto paper.

3. Punch holes on each side of each piece of paper.

4. Crochet a chain with your yarn. As you can see in this photo, the crocheted chain looks just a little more grown up than a plain piece of yarn. Since I’m using cheap materials, I wanted to make it look a bit more finished!

I figured my chain gauge to be about 6 ch = 1″ and I determined that each sheet of paper was 8″ wide and I wanted enough chain to string 4 pages (8″x4=32″) plus a bit (10″). I aimed to crochet a chain that was about 42″ long, so I needed to crochet 42×6 = 252 chains. You can eyeball it if you like, too!

If you are using ribbon, skip the crocheting! The point is to use what you have on hand! Lace would also be really cute.

5. String the chain through the holes on each paper. Most of the chain will be hidden behind each piece of paper.

6. Make tassels with yarn, if desired.

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