07 December 2023 , 13:53
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Most households are feeling the strain at this notoriously pricey time of year due to the cost of living crisis. Even if you've budgeted for gifts, food, and everything else, any way to save on the expense of Christmas items is appreciated.
A mother shared how to decorate your home for Christmas without spending much at all, including finding branches and shrubs to fluff up your tree and using nail varnish to create a distinctive marbled look on decorations - her approach is eco-friendly too.
Claire Douglas, 40, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, specializes in cost-effective and imaginative home interior design projects, and has spent years developing her 'bespoke on a budget' approach.
Whether it's foraging for flowers, leaves, sticks, and branches to make rustic garlands and wreaths, or upcycling and re-using materials and cardboard boxes for DIY furniture and textural decorating. Claire said she has always enjoyed finding less expensive and sustainable methods to decorate her living spaces.
Because of the effects of the cost-of-living crisis, this has become especially important for the freelance interior writer and content creator - and with Christmas just around the corner, she wants to offer some helpful tips to help others by offering handy tips on how they can decorate their homes without breaking the bank.
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Her hacks include nail varnishing baubles, foraging for greenery and using the leaves and branches to make a 'fake real tree,' creating Christmas crackers and napkin rings out of unused toilet roll tubes, and even drying fruit on the radiator as extra adornment for fairy lights. 'It's fun, you can get the kids involved, and you can be as bold or restrained as you like with these things,' Claire explained.
Claire has amassed thousands of followers on her and accounts, and enjoys running her blog, , where she posts helpful tips and tutorials on room transformations for people on a budget. She also offers product recommendations and online courses.
Last year, ahead of the festive season, Claire focused on finding sustainable, low-cost methods to decorate her house. Rather than buying a real Christmas tree or upgrading her existing artificial one, she decided to take a more hands-on, budget-friendly approach and go foraging to make her own.
Shecarefully got branches, bushes, and leaves from her garden - without destroying the greenery - to create a living Christmas tree around her existing artificial tree, which she no longer used but did not want to throw away. Claire has another Christmas trick that involves 'pimping your dull fairy lights' with decorations like painted pinecones or dried fruit.
She chopped up some oranges, laid the pieces on paper, and left them on the radiator instead of buying already dried but expensive fruit or turning on the oven for hours to dry the fruit. Claire wants to inspire others not to be afraid of making errors and hopes that she may assist others in decorating their houses in a creative way that "saves money and waste."
Claire's Instagram followers were amazed at her crafty Christmas hacks, focusing on using branches from the garden to transform a faux Christmas tree, one person said, "What a clever idea! I might just steal this as we have two rather large conifers in the garden that could share a few branches."
Another said: "Brilliant idea looks gorge." Most were taken aback by the genius way Claire made bespoke painted Christmas baubles using old nail polish in water to create a dipped marble design. One person wrote: "My girls would love doing this." One more said: "This is seriously awesome."