The holidays can be stressful, especially if your budget is tight or you like to make everything yourself.  There just aren’t enough hours and dollars to get everything done, it seems.  Hopefully I can help alleviate some of your stress with these easy ideas for the holidays.

You may have noticed already, but my “go to” idea for easy gift giving is to thrift, glue, and spray paint!  It’s amazing how different (and more expensive) a few items can look when rearranged and painted to look cohesive.  For this project, I used a combination of Goodwill and recycled items, but you could easily find these items at the dollar store as well.

Project estimate:

• Ornaments, $1 and up
• Frame, $1
• Tin, $1
• Glass container, on hand
• Glue, on hand
• Spray paint, on hand or $3 and up

Total:  $3 and up

For the frame:  Remove the glass and backing from the frame.  Use E-6000 glue to adhere snowflake ornaments to a frame.  Spray paint the entire project.  I used Krylon’s metallic finish paint in silver.  Reinsert the glass and backing.  Insert a picture or use stickers to spell a message, like I did.

For the gift tin:  Glue an ornament to the lid of the tin.  The base of the tin had silver dots on it, so I simply painted the top silver so it coordinated with the bottom of the tin.

For the candle holder:  Glue the angel ornament to the front of a cleaned glass jar.  Spray paint the exterior of the jar.  Embellish the jar as desired with ribbon and bell ornaments.  Insert a candle.

Since I used one color, it was quick and easy to make all of these gifts.  I glued them all at one time, and painted them all together.  Since they coordinate, instead of gifting them you could use them to decorate for a holiday party, or to add some cheer to your workspace.  Have fun crafting and creating!