Christmas can be overwhelming, so many relatives and friends to buy gifts for; offices and houses to decorate, and it can be tough if you’re on a budget. Here’s our tips for being creative and keeping Christmas costs under control.
Make your own decorations
Make your own simple decorations by adapting some everyday objects. We added some sparkle to the OUTinPerth office by decorating some simple plastic cups with ribbons, sequins and a silver pen. We went with pink to match our decor, but you could use a more traditional colour like red. Total cost under $15.00
Photo frames and cushions
Change the soft furnishings and ornaments in your house to create a Christmas vibe, these red cushions were just $5 each from IKEA and we put pictures in these festive red picture frames.
Make The Box The Gift
We found this old pine box in an op-shop, we pulled out the dried flowers and replaced them with Christmas bobbles and gave the box a spray with some silver paint.
Simple gift
Gather a bunch of great books from your local second hand book store and give a friend a box full of books that’ll keep them occupied for months ahead.
Bake a Gift
Grab some red coloured Chinese Take Away containers, pick up a silver pen and create your own art work, fill them up with chocolate fudge or Scottish tablet.
Colourful Jars
Grab some simple jars and fill them with water, add a few drops of red and green food colouring and you’ve got instant decorations.
Fill containers with bobbles
We grabbed this giant box of silver bobbles from IKEA and filled a giant vase with them, we also made a nice arrangement for a dining room table. The silver candle sticks we picked up at an Op-shop.
Create a Christmas Tree
Rather than buying an expensive tree, make your own, create one out of books, as shown in the image, just find a big stack of books then arrange the from largest to smallest.
Another alternative is to find an old tree branch, spray paint it gold or silver and hand an excessive amount of bobbles from the branches.
Do you have a hat stand? Put the coats away in the wardrobe for summer and turn your hat stand into a Christmas Tree.
