How To Turn Dollar Tree Glass Gems Into Tiny Home Decor Treasures

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Avid home florists probably all know about Dollar Tree's clear glass accent gems. They're just the thing these artisans need to fill up the bottom of a glass vase that's overflowing with flowers. The gems make arrangements sparkle like diamonds, but cost pennies. So entrenched are they in the minds of crafters as vase fillers that they're overlooked for other DIYs, such as decorative miniature tiles. These miniature photo glass tiles, filled with images of flora and fauna, can, in turn, become the building blocks for untold home decor projects.

The supplies list for this is small. Dollar Tree carries a number of different types of flat glass marbles in its floral section. The Clear Glass Accent Gems make the most sense if you want the clearest view of the images you choose to decorate the tiles with. However, if you have a theme or a color scheme in mind for your project, you can go with something like the Floral Garden Aqua Mist Decorative Glass Gems. This package contains glass stones in clear and light green hues. The images you'll glue onto the backs of the glass marbles will still show through the colored gems. However, using them gives you some decorative options that the clear gems alone won't.

You'll need an adhesive to glue the images to the backs of the glass gems. In this case, L.A. Colors Color Vibe Nail Polish Top Coat becomes your glue. This option works better than glue because the polish dries clear, allowing you to see the pictures behind the glass. An assortment of magazines and a pair of scissors finishes up this DIY's supplies list.

To turn the Dollar Tree glass stones for your home project into mini photo tiles, first go through the different magazines and brochures you have for small and pretty images. Animals, plants, famous buildings (like the Eiffel Tower), and interesting words and geometric forms are some of the images you could look for. Pull those pages out of the magazines since it'll be easier to work with the images if you remove them from the magazine or book you found them in. After you've done that, lay a gem over the top of a small image to confirm the fit. Make sure that the image is well-cropped, so the most interesting aspects of the image end up behind the glass. 

Apply some nail polish to the back of a gem then place it over an image. Leave it there to dry. Once the adhesive is dry, cut around the gem so you have a fitted image behind each marble. You'll find that when you glue tiny photos from magazines to the back of the flat marbles, the images are still recognizable. Basically, this is the miniatures equivalent of putting your photographs behind the glass pane of a picture frame.

Old magazines count among the easiest ways to find pictures small enough to fit behind these glass gems. Other options include taking images from postcards or printing tiny photos on canvas paper (a hack that can make your family photos look like high-end decor). If you're making miniature keepsakes for family and friends, the latter is a fun option because the gems can be used for personalized craft projects.

The uses for these photo glass tiles are myriad. Three uses immediately come to mind, though you're certainly not limited to just three. First up, poetry magnets for the refrigerator. For this tiny home decor project, you'll swap out images of puppies and poppies and substitute them for single words. When you go through your magazine, look for assorted nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs to glue to the back of the gems. You get bonus points if you find words written in interesting fonts and colors. Then, glue a Linlinzz Round Magnet for Refrigerators to the back of each finished stone. Put them on the fridge to make sweet poems, or more practically, to hold up this week's grocery list.

Or try using the glass gems when you're DIYing a unique statement decor piece like a side table coffee mug mosaic project. Many of the tiles can come from the repurposed pieces of broken coffee mugs. However, putting a few of the photo gems here and there makes the mosaic project more interesting. And if you put photos of family or friends behind the glass, it makes for a very personal project, particularly if the coffee mugs you use for the mosaic also belonged to the recipient.

Finally, in recent years, people have taken to making miniatures. The best of these have become tiny decor pieces for bookshelves and other areas of the home. The tiny photos behind the glass gems would make a great piece of wall art inside one of these miniature homes or apartments.