Reader Heather at My Frugal Family is stuck in bed due to an injury, but she’s not letting that keep her from crafting. Check out her hand-stitched Valentine’s Day banner. She used a lot of on-hand items, and estimates her cost at about $1.19 for the banner. You can easily customize this project to make use of whatever you have on hand, and you can …

Gail at Can’t Stop Making Things made this cute greenhouse cloche using dollar store frames! This is a nice way to emphasize a prized piece of a collection. You can paint this greenhouse antiqued white like this, if you have shabby chic or country decor, or how about an urban modern cloche in black or red-orange? Also, picture frames are a great construction material that …

Use an old technique to make a cool new lamp! Use string, a balloon, and some kind of stiffener to make this cool string lampshade, found at Pickles. You can pick up a pendant lamp kit at your local home improvement store or IKEA for ten bucks or less. Or, you could play around with using twinkle lights  as illumination. Pickles used wallpaper paste to …

Have you seen Terry Border’s work?  If not, you MUST!  He takes wire, pliers, and everyday objects and turns them into the most FABULOUS characters.  I only recently discovered his blog, Bent Objects, and nearly died laughing at all his little friends!  Terry also has a new book out called Bent Objects:  The Secret Life of Everyday Things.  I am dying to get my hands on that book!
Anyway, after looking …

Ready for your mind to be blown? Those roses aren’t real. They’re made from coffee filters. I know! (Insert head explosion here) Sarah Jane from The Crafteteria is the genius mind behind these fabulous fakes. They appear to be time-consuming, but wow, they sure are beautiful! What would you use these for? Give me some of your good ideas in the comments! [and click here …

I so love this simple and brilliant idea by my friend Marie at the Craftzine blog. Since it’s still cold outside, your dollar store (and every other store on the planet, pretty much) will probably have these magic stretch gloves, so pick up a few pairs to make a fun Velcro catch game. Kids of all ages will enjoy this game, and it looks like …

Disney at Ruffles and Stuff made this great ruffly pom-pom lamp using some unlikely suspects from her local dollar store kitchen section. Would you believe she spent only a dollar on this? She had some vital materials on hand, but you can still make it for less than five bucks even if you don’t have any of the materials on hand! Making lamps out of …

Here’s a simple and fun idea for making a custom monogram plaque that you can customize in infinite ways to go with your personal taste and decor. Rhoda at Southern Hospitality made these, inspired by a project she saw at Joys of Home (a blog that often has great dollar store decor ideas, by the way!). Choose your favorite scrapbook paper, paint color, and initial, …

Happy birthday to me! Today I’m 33, so I’m going to share with you a clever birthday greeting card idea I got from reader Theo-Ann at Outside the Box. She used some oversized chalkboard stickers (normally used for wall decals, find them in a little display unit with other wall decals if you shop at Dollar Tree) and cut them down to greeting card size …

I saw a cardboard playhouse kit at my local big-box store, and I admit I was tempted to just buy it for convenience’s sake. The price was high enough to make me think again (and again… the price was pretty high!), so I was really excited when I stumbled across this DIY cardboard playhouse project over at Urban Craft. This crafty mama (and fellow Oregonian!) …