DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees

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These DIY Dollar Tree duster trees are the least expensive and most beautiful Christmas decor you’ll likely to see this holiday season!

Once you see it, you can’t un-see it. It’s right there in your hand staring back at you and daring you not to see it!

How many times have you looked at a duster like this?

dollar tree duster on a table

If you’re like us, you’ve at least seen it a thousand times on one of your dozen weekly trips to Dollar Tree.

What’s that? You don’t go to Dollar Tree 12 times a week?

But wait, my babes told me it’s totally normal. In fact, she’s been telling me lately we don’t go to enough Dollar Trees! Am I to understand I’ve been misled about how often the average American races to Dollar Tree?

Huh. I’ll have to have a word with Handan about this, but first let’s get back to this duster.

You’ve seen it, right? It and its fluffy brethren just hang out all day long in Dollar Trees all across the land.

And until now, it’s just been a fluffy duster – about as unobtrusive and milquetoast as a Dollar Tree product can be.

But then something shifts in your brain – a tumbler clicks into place, and you spit out your half-caff-skinny-vanilla-cocoa-latte-with-3-pumps-NOT-4 and you see that duster in a whole new light.

And you can never, never go back to see it as a duster again.

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com

Take another sip of your half-caff-skinny to replace the mouthful  you spit out, and let me show you the absolute cheapest, easiest Christmas craft that also happens to be one of the most beautiful! At its most basic, this craft can be just $1.25. If you want to gussy it up with LED fairy lights, your cost for each tree goes up to $2.50

Dollar Tree will run out of dusters. You’ve been warned, so plan accordingly!

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees SUPPLIES LIST

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We love to see our craft projects out in the wild! If you try this seasonal craft project, take a picture and post it on Instagram, be sure to tag us @TheNavagePatch!

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees VIDEO Tutorial

Watch our short and fun video below for an overview of our DIY Dollar tree duster trees before you read the detailed step-by-step tutorial.

Watch Our Tutorial On YouTube

This is one of those crafts that will take so much longer for me to write about than it will take you to make, so let’s cut the chatter and get crafting!

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees Tutorial

Step 1 – Fluff it up!

Spin that duster in your hands – back and forth – to get those hairs (strands? fur?) really standing on end.

man spinning a duster in his hands

Step 2 – Haircut

Trim the duster starting from the top middle and angling out to the edge about 3/4 of the way to the bottom.

man cutting a duster with scissors

Don’t cut farther than this. I mean, you can, of course. The craft police aren’t going to bust down your door and haul you off to a prison cell made of popsicle sticks and hot glue or anything. It’s just that we found the trees looked better when I trimmed them to the exact point my finger is pointing to.

man cutting a duster with scissors

Keep trimming, and soon enough you’ll see a familiar shape emerge through the fluff.

man trimming a duster with scissors

Every once in a while, you can spin-fluff the tree to see if everything is looking evenly cut.

man cutting a duster with scissors

From here, just keep trimming until you’re happy with the shape!

man cutting a duster with scissors
man holding a duster tree

Step 3 – Remove the handle

It’s time to remove the handle. You could even do this in the very beginning, but I found it easier to hold the handle than the thin wire stem in the middle. The handle is secured with a bit of hot glue, but if you keep twisting the handle in the unscrewing direction, you’ll break the glue bond, and the handle will unscrew itself from the twisted-wire spine.

man pulling the handle off a duster
man pulling the handle off a duster

Step 4 – Add lights

Wrap a strand of battery-operated LED fairy lights around duster tree, starting up top and working down. These trees allow you to nestle the lights into the fluff, so the wire won’t be seen.

man wrapping fairy lights around a duster tree
man wrapping fairy lights around a duster tree

Step 5 – Mount

You can mount the tree anywhere you’d like. I’ll show you how we mounted ours.

For the first duster tree, I got a Dollar Tree wood box from our CraftStashâ„¢

man holding a small wood box

I put some Dollar Tree floral foam (also from the CraftStashâ„¢) in the box.

man holding a block of floral foam
man putting floral foam in a small wood box

Then I stuck the wire tree base into the floral foam and tucked the fairy light controller in the box. Both square and round boxes are from Dollar Tree.

man mounting a duster tree in a box with floral foam

Astute Astrids and Noticing Nancies will have seen the box has magically changed from square to cylinder in the picture above. I decided round was a better look, but you decide for yourself.

Here’s how my duster tree looks when unlit and sitting in its cube.

dollar tree duster tree

And here it is all lit up in its cylinder!

dollar tree duster tree

Which do you prefer?

To mount the next two duster trees, I used two log slices I had on hand.

man holding two log slices

I drilled a hole in each large enough to accommodate the tree’s wire, but I didn’t drill all the way through the wood.

man holding two log slices

To display my DIY duster trees, I placed one log slice on the other and placed the boxed tree onto the top log slice.

DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com
DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com
DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com
DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com
DIY Dollar Tree Duster Trees by TheNavagePatch.com




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49 Comments

  1. THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!! These are magnificent!!!! I make your yarn trees in every color imaginable, also your mop wreaths and I thought those were brillant but THESE are making me run not walk to pick some up at the $1.25 store or as I think of it now, don’t want to change my name to the real price store.
    Thank you again for the fantastic idea&tell Handan to keep the ideas flowing!!! We all love them, oh, and Your Master Crafter directions!!

  2. Oh my gosh, I LOVE this!! I am definitely going to have to make this!! It does not look like a Dollar Tree craft. Thanks for sharing.

  3. This is such a great idea!! I’ll see if I can find some dusters at the dollar store nearby and give this a try. I don’t have any beautiful tree logs like you do, but I’ll make it work with whatever I find/have on hand. Thanks for this post!

  4. Just wondering if the round container was big enough to fit the battery holder too, or did you light all 3 trees with one long string of lights? In other words, aside from the square container, where did you hide the battery holders for the other trees?

    1. Hi Sara, the round container does fit the battery pack. For the other two trees, I just hid the packs behind the trees. You can even see one in one of the photos!

  5. Looks like a trip to Dollar Tree for me! This is an adorable craft. Thanks so much, Greg. Wasn’t sure what to put on our mantle this year and you’ve solved the problem!!!

  6. You “guys” are just too much! They are Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful!!
    Once again, Nice Job! Oh…I have been to dollar tree, twice in my life. I really must catch up! Off to buy me some dusters!!
    As always, thanks for sharing!

  7. Love them!!!
    Who would have thought to use a duster for a tree?
    Only Handan & Greg, that’s who!!
    Will be making a few of these duster trees (if I can find the at DT).
    And I love making trees, using jute, yarn, shims, wood, material, burlap, cloth tarps (even stuff some of them them).
    Stars too!!
    Thanks for sharing.

  8. Now you’re going to make me go back to $ tree for a new project! I’ve been looking for the cheap little plastic fireplace, smh. We have 2 stores and not a one to be found. Looked online guess what out of stock. I’m bummed. So now I’m going back to look for these dusters wish me luck. Love your blogs. Keep them coming.

    Michele

  9. Greg,
    I love the duster trees! I am heading to the Dollar Tree in the morning. I have three stores very close. I made the witch brooms for Halloween, and they turned out fantastic! I received complements from the goblins. Thank you and Handan for the great ideas.

  10. OMGosh, these are so cute! Bonus, they will go with some yarn trees that we have for our mantle!!

    I am thinking a little wooden star cutout would be perfect at the top as well.

    Thanks for another awesome idea!!

  11. I’d be curious if it’s possible to snip off the top plastic or if the fluff would start to come off the top. Maybe bend the tip over? Hmm, looks like I’ll have to give it a go. Thanks for the great project and inspiration.

  12. These are SO pretty! I never in a million years would have thought this up…thanks for sharing this original (and budget friendly) project!

  13. I am wanting to make the dollar tree trees. But where do I really find them with the metal in the middle?

  14. These are adorable and I’ve already ordered the dusters! The shaggy tree to the left and back of them, what is it made of? The greenish one? đŸ’œ