Dollar Tree: Witchy Edition!
I’m currently browsing witchblr and it occurred to me that, as a Dollar Tree employee, I do a lot of my witchy shopping at the Dollar Tree (because I’m poor because I work at Dollar Tree lmao). I feel like Dollar Tree is one of those stores that you don’t really know what all they have unless you work there, or if you go inside and spend an hour or two just wandering the aisles and perusing the stock. So I wanted to share some of my ideas for dollar store witchy shopping, for the financially strapped witches of the world!
Note: I am absolutely not saying that you need supplies/items to be a good witch. The most important part of practice is intent! Your chosen deities will not fault you for not being able to have pretty glass bowls and sweet pea candles. Witchcraft is about the purpose and the intent behind your spells and rituals, not the items you have!
Okay, let’s get started! I’ll update this post as I find new things that can be used, because it’s a weird hobby to go in on my days off and just browse…since I have no life and nothing better to do.
Alright, so I will readily admit that the candles from Dollar Tree are not the strongest smelling candles in the world. The Pillsbury ones, which are some of my favorites, are pretty strong and I love making my room smell like a butter cake. But for the most part, most of the candles don’t smell super strong and won’t smell up your whole house like a Better Homes or Yankee Candle will. However, I think they are perfect for altar use, or just to have on your desk in your bedroom. I do all of my practicing in my room, since I share a student apartment with 3 other girls, so this isn’t a big deal for me. As an artist, color is a huge focus of mine, so when purchasing candles from the dollar tree, I go largely based on color. For unscented candles, we sell a lot of votive and taper candles, as well as tea lights! These are mainly white, but we do have some cute striped ones at my Dollar Tree every now and then. We also have some incense, but I haven’t tried it.
I’m putting this in it’s own section because we have just as many candle holders as we do candles! I personally love when we start getting seasonal tealight holders in. We get Halloween, Christmas, and winter/spring/summer/fall themed holders in a lot, which are generally kept in the seasonal area at the front of my store and not with the rest of the candle items. In terms of year round candle supplies, we usually have ceramic holders of so many shapes and sizes I can’t even remember them all, as well as metal and glass cups/stands for tealights, votives, pillar, and taper candles. We have star shapes, leaf shapes, round, square, anything you can think of! Come buy candle holders from Dollar Tree!
Okay, this was something I actually came across as an idea on Youtube, and I’m kind of annoyed at myself for not thinking of it before! But I also don’t use an altar cloth, so… Anyway, in the kitchen section you can find silk table runners in quite a wide variety of colors. If you’re setting up an elemental altar, we have red, green, and blue at my store, as well as neutral white and brown. I personally would go with the white or cream colors, since my altar is multipurpose and I dedicate it as needed. The runners are 12 inches wide and 72 inches long, so I think they would fit most altars unless yours is super compact!
Y’all. My store here in Rexburg has SO. MANY. VASES it’s not even fucking funny. We sell a lot of glass product, which in turn tells corporate to just keep sending us more, and we don’t have all the shelf space needed for all the shipments we get, so we end up having to stack open-faced boxes in the aisles. It’s pretty terrible, lol. Anyway, if you go on the Dollar Tree website, you can see that we have a pretty large selection as far as size and shape goes. We sell Mason jars as well, which are a favorite of mine. I don’t usually buy these in bulk, so it MIGHT be cheaper to buy your mason jars in packages at Walmart or something, but I buy as I need them, and Dollar Tree is still my favorite for vases and pebble terrarium jars just because their selection is way better imo.
I’m using a fancy word to describe what’s essentially a wine glass, but I have five different glasses that I’ve bought from the Dollar Tree, and I love them. There’s normally a really good variety of color and even shape (stemless, stemmed, margarita, etc). The seasonal glasses are my favorite, because they’re normally decorated beautifully. For fall, the glassware/dishware had autumn leaves, and this year our spring collection glassware was a gorgeous sapphire blue! If you are a fan of liquid offerings/faery libation brews/etc, check your Dollar Tree!
If you have an altar, it’s pretty standard that you have some representation of your deities on it. My primary deity is Bast/Sekhmet, and I also have some representation of Ptah, and while Bast is represented with a figurine that I saved up for specifically, Ptah is represented by a small 2x2 canvas I did an abstract painting on (since I’m an artist and follow him as the god of the arts). Whether you’re starting out or you just don’t have room for a statue, some people prefer to represent their deities with icons. You can paint your own or print one off from the Internet, but you’re probably going to want a frame to put it in! Dollar Tree has a massive selection of photo frames, usually, and mine even sells different sized photo stands (in different colors!)
Also for people who like liquid offerings, Dollar Tree has a number of glass salad bowls and crystal-like glass bowls, flat dishes for food offerings, or even just for decoration! They come in multiple sizes as well, so you can get really tiny ones for decor or normal dinner bowls for offerings. The smaller plates can also be used to hold items that you’re consecrating.
So depending on what kind of witchcraft you practice/deity you worship/spells you cast/etc., a lot of your general supplies can be found at the Dollar Tree. Here are a few recommendations for pretty basic supplies:
1. Matchsticks, the brand is Diamond and they come in a box of 300
2. Saltines/crackers (I use these as a basic food offering)
3. Nuts/other snack foods for offerings
4. Pints of milk if your Dollar Tree has a fridge section, if you’re meticulous enough to have a separate food stash for your offerings (I know some people who are)
5. Notebooks. I’m not very picky on what my grimoires/books of shadows look like. My current book of shadows is a composition book with a bunch of kawaii art on the front…:D
6. Salt, you can buy a big container of it for 50 cents
7. Other herbs/spices in decent sized containers, if you’re into kitchen witchery
8. If you don’t have an athame and want a knife specifically for carving into candles or something, you can find singles and packs of kitchen knives.
9. I like to decorate my altar according to sabbats, so for decor, the craft aisles have bags of river gems, stones, and aquarium stones as well as a variety of flowers. There’s bags of hot glue sticks if you need them for a hot glue gun (which I use a LOT); ribbons and rolls of decorative mesh, and depending on the holiday they get themed color rolls of these items in as well; there’s garden decor like birds, dragonflies, etc for floral decorating that can be used in a number of ways; bags of sand; foam blocks in multiple shapes of floral arranging; and in fall, there’s always a large selection of autumnal decor to choose from (just be sure to get there early in the holiday season for fall items, as they start being set out in September and sell fast!).
That’s all I can think of right now. As I said, I will continue to add to it as I find new things!
