Y’all it has been a hot minute since I have mus­tered up enough time and cre­ativ­i­ty to come up with some­thing cre­ative, much less write about it. I thought there was no bet­ter way to get back in the game than a good ole Dol­lar Tree East­er DIY. I real­ize many Dol­lar Tree loca­tions have dif­fer­ent assort­ments of sup­plies but hope­ful­ly you can take this tuto­r­i­al, and allow it to inspire you to cre­ate your own ver­sion. What­ev­er that may look like.

I am pro­vid­ing a list of the sup­plies I used for ref­er­ence when plan­ning your own project.

• 4 mini plaques from Dol­lar Tree
• 1 jum­bo pop­ci­cle stick
• Glue gun
• Paint of choice
• 3 Dol­lar Tree Egg ornaments
• Elmers Glue
• Stain of choice
• Green­ery
• Sand­pa­per
• Sta­ple gun (option­al)
• Tooth­brush (option­al)

Begin your Dol­lar Tree East­er DIY by glue­ing them end to end to form one larg­er rec­tan­gle. This will serve as the back­ground of the entire project.

With these par­tic­u­lar plaques I found it nec­es­sary to rein­force the mid­dle seam by glue­ing a jum­bo pop­si­cle stick to the cen­ter. This step is option­al an will obvi­ous­ly vary depend­ing on what mate­r­i­al being used for the background.

I chose to stain the plaque with my per­son­al favorite shade of stain, Ear­ly Amer­i­can by Min­wax which can be found at most home improve­ment stores.

This is where this DIY get inter­est­ing. After the stain has dried you will paint on a thick lay­er of Elmer’s Glue. Yes you read that right. Elmer’s Glue is the secret ingre­di­ent behind all those beau­ti­ful faux crack­le fin­ish­es. Before the glue has time to dry, read ahead to the next step.

While the glue is still wet, apply a coat of paint right on top. I am using a basic white here. Trust me on this one. I know it feels wrong but if it is then you don’t wan­na be right.

Once you have applied the paint it’s time to grab the heat gun or hair dry­er to fin­ish the job. This is where the mag­ic tru­ly hap­pens. As the sur­face dries the crack­led effect will appear. Like lit­er­al magic…except not. It’s just you and your mad craft­ing skills to blame for this one.

Don’t for­get to add a lit­tle dis­tress­ing to the edges with sandpaper.

Now the the back­ground is ready, grab your East­er egg orna­ments and slap a lay­er of stain on them before paint­ing. I used the same stain as before and lay­ered it with “Dusk” by Waver­ly. The only down­side to these lit­tle shapes that can get a lit­tle pesky is the tiny holes in the tops. I like to fill them with a hot glue or wood glue and light­ly sand them smooth before painting. 

To ad a speck­led look grab an old tooth­brush, light­ly load it with paint and run your fin­ger across the bris­tles to splat­ter tiny lit­tle paint flecks to your sur­face. This step is com­plete­ly option­al but it cre­ates a real­ly fun effect.

To top every­thing off with this Dol­lar Tree East­er DIY I grabbed some lambs ear picks I already had on hand, trimmed them to size and attached them with a sta­ple gun. You can also glue them if you don’t have a gun read­i­ly available.

Topped with a bow and this pret­ty lit­tle project is fin­ished and ready to dec­o­rate! Not too bad for a project cost­ing less than $10!