DIY Wood Snowflake Chargers + Christmas tablescape

This post is part of a series entitled “12 DIYs of Christmas”. You can see all the projects and post in this series here.

I am so excited to share this LAST project in our 12 DIY’s of Christmas. I hope you have gotten some inspiration and found some Christmas projects you were able to do this year or maybe will save and do for next Christmas.

For the 12th DIY of Christmas, I created a DIY Wood Snowflake which I am using as a charger for our Christmas table

I saw some white snowflake wood chargers at a store and fell in love. But at $14 each they were way out my budget. So I determined to find a way to make them for cheaper and I did just that!

Supplies needed to make 4 snowflakes (affiliate links):

12 – 5-gallon paint sticks (they come in a pack of 3 at Home Depot for $0.98 each so you will need 4 packs)
16 – 1-gallon paint sticks (they come in pack of 10 at Home Depot so you will need 2 packs)
miter saw
wood glue
paint of your choice (I used Rustoleum Chalked spray paint in white)

Here’s the paint sticks I used to make 4 snowflakes. So my total cost was less than $6 for all 4 snowflakes since I already had paint and wood glue on hand – now that fits my budget!

Each snowflake will use 3 – 5-gallon paint sticks and 4 – 1-gallon paint sticks. You can see where I marked them to be cut below but here’s an explanation of each cut too.

Cut the handles off of every paint stick
Cut 2 of the 5-gallon paint sticks in half
Cut the 1-gallon paint sticks in 3-inch sections.

Which will you leave you with this…

Then set your miter saw to 30 degrees and all the rest of your cuts will be made with this. I am not great with geometry and figuring out angles but this is easy!

Cut all 4 of the half pieces of the 5-gallon sticks just with a 30-degree cut. (Ignore my not complete mitered cut below. You will want a complete mitered cut without the little straight corner. I had to recut mine a bit more.)

Set 2 of those half pieces aside – you are done with those. The other 2 pieces you are going to flip over and cut another 30 degree mitered cut making your board into a point.

So this is what the half pieces of your 5-gallon paint sticks should look like. The other whole paint 5-gallon paint stick is left as is.

Now you can see how these all fit together. The long one goes first vertical up and down and then lay out the side pieces like you see below. See how those 30-degree angles fit perfectly! They don’t even have to be perfectly pointed 30-degree angles on each side – they will still fit just fine!

I didn’t grab a picture but you just need to cut a simple 30 degree cut on one side of all those 3-inch pieces of the smaller paint sticks.

Here’s the whole snowflake assembled so you can see and then I’ll explain how I assembled it all. I just used wood glue! I laid them all out on a paper on the table and glued the large snowflakes together and all the little “V” pieces together. Let those dry and then glue the “V” pieces onto the snowflakes. I lightly sanded all the ends and the seams and then spray painted it with Rustoleum Chalked paint.

I just adore these snowflakes!! I can’t wait to use them in January too – you will probably be seeing them again. So many ways you could use them – display on a mantel/entry table, hang it on a door, hang them outside – but I was most looking forward to using them as chargers on a Christmas table.

I love setting a pretty table and using something unique and fun like wood snowflakes for chargers just makes it more special.

I have Pfaltzgraff Winterberry dishes as my Christmas dishes- collected over several years most as gifts for Christmas. I love pulling them out and using them during this time of the year. But if you don’t have special Christmas dinnerware some simple white or red plates and festive napkins would look just as pretty with these snowflakes.

My tablecloth was from a Better Homes & Gardens line at Walmart a few years ago.

And my centerpiece is the chalky finish painted mason jars I made a few years back that I just placed in a dough bowl with some greenery. I just adore these mason jars and love using them every year.

Tablecapes are so fun to create and photograph and we’ll enjoy using this Christmas table the rest of this week.

Don’t you just love those snowflakes though? How you would use them? And if you don’t have time to make them before Christmas, then make them after Christmas and enjoy them in January! I’ll share what I do with mine for winter then too.

I’ll be back with one more Christmas post and then it will be time to just enjoy the last few days and finish wrapping and baking around here! Hope your Christmas prep is going well and you are finding some time to just stop and ENJOY it all.