Frugal mum reveals how to decorate your house for Christmas for free – from harvesting a tree to making nail polish trinkets and toilet roll napkin rings

A mum has revealed how to decorate your home this Christmas without spending a penny – including finding branches and shrubs to build a tree and creating a unique marbled effect on baubles using nail polish.

Claire Douglas, 40, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, specializes in money-saving and creative interior design projects and has spent years developing her ‘bespoke budget’ approach.

From foraging for flowers, leaves, sticks and branches to make rustic garlands and wreaths, to upcycling and reusing materials and cardboard packaging for DIY furniture and texture styling, Claire has always enjoyed finding cheaper and sustainable ways to to decorate her living spaces.

This has become especially important for the freelance interiors writer and content creator due to the impact of the cost of living crisis – and with Christmas just around the corner, she wants to provide some useful tips to help others open their minds to the ways where they can decorate their homes without spending a lot of money.

Her hacks include decorating Christmas baubles with nail polish, foraging for greenery and using the leaves and branches to create a ‘fake real tree’, making Christmas crackers and napkin rings with leftover toilet roll tubes, and even drying fruit on the radiator as an additional decoration for fairytale lights.

Claire has also made concete-style candle holders and vases from soaking cloth napkins in a microcement mixture, wrapped empty boxes as extra decoration, and created festive displays by adding baubles to bowls – all of which cost her nothing, yet added style and originality.

‘Social media is great, but at this time of year it’s flooded with people spending obscene amounts of money,’ Claire explains.

‘You look through it and it’s almost overwhelming, you just think: “I can’t compete with this”… and especially with the cost of living crisis, it puts people off.

‘I just wanted to look at it from a different angle. Instead of “how much money can you throw at this”, there are plenty of other ways that won’t negatively impact the planet or your bank balance and can be quite fun to do… and you can get your kids involved , at.’

Claire has amassed 28,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram, and enjoys running her blog, Claire Douglas Styling, where she posts helpful tips and tutorials on room transformations for those on a budget. She also offers product recommendations and online courses.

Last year, ahead of the holidays, Claire focused on finding sustainable, inexpensive ways to decorate her home, including building her own Christmas tree using leaves.

Instead of buying a real Christmas tree or upgrading her existing artificial Christmas tree, she decided to take a more practical, budget-friendly approach and look for her own Christmas tree.

With just a short trip to her garden, Claire carefully collected branches, shrubs and leaves – without damaging the greenery – to build a Christmas tree around her existing artificial tree that she no longer used but didn’t want to throw away.

She then added her own decorations to create an ombre effect. This year she may even spray paint her tree, as she plans to rebuild her own tree.

The freelance interiors writer and content creator posted a video of this hack to her TikTok account (@clairedouglassstyling) last year and it received nearly 900,000 views.

“You can do it the traditional way — you just take conifers and you make it look like a real tree — or you can be a little more creative,” she said.

‘I ended up getting lots of different shrubs and foliage, just everything that lived in our garden in the winter, and added decorations and some colour.

‘I made it an ombre pink and silver style a few years ago and it looked really good – and again, it didn’t cost anything because we already had the tree and the foliage was free.’

More recently, Claire has posted tutorials on how to turn toilet roll tubes into napkin rings by cutting cardboard to the desired length and adding string, twine or ribbon.

Her ‘unique’ custom-made baubles are created by adding heated nail polish to water, dipping the baubles (or other decoration of your choice) into the liquid and letting them dry.

“It’s fun, you can get the kids involved, and you can be as bold or subdued as you want with these things,” Claire explained.

‘You can go really loose with the colors, or if you have a more neutral interior palette, you can also play around with that a bit.

‘There’s something for everyone with this way of decorating your home… and you can make amazing things for free.’

Claire has another festive hack, including ‘pimping up your boring Christmas lights’ by adding decorations such as painted pine cones or dried fruit.

Instead of going to the store or turning on the oven for hours to dry the fruit, Claire cut a few oranges, placed the slices on paper and left them on the radiator.

She has used ‘salt dough’ – made with flour, salt and water – to make Christmas decorations, and she has upcycled cardboard packaging to make several items for her home, including a coffee table.

Claire wants to encourage people not to be afraid of making mistakes and hopes she can help others decorate their homes in creative ways that ‘save money and waste’.

“What started this whole project was literally the cost of living,” Claire said.

‘People were really struggling at this time of year, and the pressure of Christmas can be overwhelming anyway, so I wanted to come up with ideas that didn’t involve spending money.

“So if it wasn’t an option to go out and buy decorations, you could literally just make things from everyday items around the house.”

She added: ‘If people are feeling a little discouraged because they don’t have the money or time to spend, there are loads of ways you can make an impact on your home and make it feel really festive.’