Light Up Your Planters With A Clever Dollar Tree DIY

Dollar Tree is a bargain shopper's paradise, but it's also home to a plethora of products ripe for repurposing. Even as their base prices have increased, supplies are still relatively cheap for DIY yard and garden decor projects. Certain items can be repurposed in so many ways, such as any of the store's solar stake lights. Though the solar lights available at the store seem to change seasonally, most of them can be incorporated into projects to make your own illuminated accent pieces, such as this Dollar Tree lighting hack that adds style to your yard.

One creative DIY piece from YouTuber Bargain Bethany is an illuminated, stacked orb planter base made using clear Dollar Tree bowls, solar lights, and faux flowers, perfect for a front porch or patio. The fun part about this project is you can make specialty versions for holidays or championship sports games, changing the plant stand's lights colors to, say, orange for Halloween. The project is highly customizable in that you can make the illuminated plant stand as tall as you want — just add more DIY spheres between the top and bottom bowls that make up the base and the flower or plant container. If you love the look of ambient lighting after dark, you could also use solar lights for a DIY birdbath that lights up at night.

Visit the Dollar Tree kitchen aisle for clear serving bowls and punch bowls. To make an illuminated planter similar to the example in the photo above, purchase four of the Caterer's Corner crystal cut plastic punch bowls and four smaller clear plastic bowls such as the 8-inch clear plastic fluted serving bowls. You'll need a hot glue gun, glue sticks, and three solar lights (you don't need the stakes), or one per sphere, if you're making a taller lamp. Before gluing anything together, stack bowls together, top to top, to test their fit as spheres. The example above has a large punch bowl sphere in the center, with the fluted bowl spheres above and below it. The other two punch bowls form the base and the planter top, respectively.

Flip one punch bowl upside down for the base, then adhere the bottom of a smaller fluted bowl to it with hot glue. Glue a solar light without its stake inside the smaller bowl, right side up, then glue an upside down fluted bowl on that to make a sphere with the light inside. Repeat the process to make 2 more spheres with lights in them. Stack the finished spheres atop one another, gluing them in place, then glue the remaining punch bowl on top. Lastly, fill the bowl with assorted faux flowers and foliage. If desired, use a block of floral foam to help hold things in place. You can also add rocks for weight so the structure doesn't blow over. Don't forget to stick it someplace it gets plenty of sun! This project will pair nicely with DIY lighted planters, and you can even coordinate the lighting colors.