The Broke Student's DIY Guide to Christmas
Student loan running out after a manic first term? Rest your revision-frazzled brain with AM CityGrad's guide to the best DIY arts and crafts projects on the internet - the Christmas edition.
FROSTED CANDLE HOLDERS WITH FUZZY YARN
Wrap old jam jars or mason jars with fuzzy white, red, or green yarn, decorate with some holly and voila. You'll probably need a hot glue gun for this, as with many other crafts. If you really want to get into crafting (read: save money by making gifts rather than spending all your student loan on them), glue guns are more or less a prerequisite. Luckily, they are available on Amazon for £11 including free delivery and a stack of glue sticks to put inside.
TEA TIN CANDLES
A similar premise to the other jar DIY, this involves old vintage tea tins that can be bought in second hand shops. You can also buy pretty tea cups for this. Melt basic prebought candles (like the big ones available at IKEA or even ASDA) in a double boiler, hang your wick, and pour the melted wax in. This seems quite messy to me, so you can also buy soya wax chips which apparently melt very easily in the microwave. Again, wicks are readily available to purchase on Amazon.
3D PAPER SNOWFLAKE
Now, this is what I call cheap. As far as I can tell even the most elaborate of these DIYS require little more than scissors, white paper, and a stapler. And patience. You can go very elaborate or stick to the basics for this, but either way its a very affordable method of decorating your uni room or flat kitchen for Christmas.
I made one at my desk under the excuse of needing to test it out to provide only high quality content for this blog. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could make a pretty snowflake. One thing I would say is to use scissors as sharp as you can find - some snowflake pros will even use a pen knife. I used some safety scissors and now my hand hurts.
I used this DIY on instructables.com
HOMEMADE HOT COCOA KITS HOOSIER
The perfect diabetes/festive cheer inducing gift for anyone with a sweet tooth in your life. Or just for yourself if you'd like to be able to knock up fancy hot chocolates on the go and in style. This is less of a craft and more of an assembly of separate parts, but you can make it pretty using a piece of ribbon and that trusty glue gun.
