Stephanie Hannah is committed to making sure holiday decor that looks straight out of a magazine is accessible for people with all budget sizes

NEED TO KNOW

• Stephanie Hanna creates whimsical, budget-friendly holiday decorations to inspire families and foster magical traditions at home
• Her viral DIY projects, like a Halloween wreath, showcase how to craft elegant displays using affordable, reusable materials
• Hanna encourages focusing on high-traffic areas and offers tips to save money while creating showstopping seasonal decor

The one word that encompasses Stephanie Hanna’s decorating style is “whimsical.”

According to Hanna, who boasts nearly 450,000 followers on her Instagram page and 84,000 on TikTok for her DIY tips and tricks and over-the-top holiday decoration scapes, the goal of almost all of her decorations is to have some “unexpected twist” that catches the eye and delights. Hanna has become well-known for her viral PVC pipe arch that she decorates each year for Christmas and Halloween in newer, bolder fashions.

“I love that friends and family and neighbors want to come over to see what I’m doing and that it inspires them,” she gushes to PEOPLE.

“The whole point of all of this was to create a warm, loving, magical home for my kids and then to inspire others to do the same,” she shares. The content creator and mom of two from South Florida tells PEOPLE she’s always loved “everything creative.” So, when she and her husband decided to have children, Hanna’s desire to create “magical” traditions for her little ones around the holidays only grew.

About 10 years ago, Hannah started sharing bits and pieces of her life on a blog online: “Mommy and me outfits and things like that,” she recalls. She touches on what digital content looked like then — there were no videos on Instagram when she got started online. “It was just pictures,” she shares, adding that the limited format helped build the loyal community that still follows her for advice today.

About six years ago, Hanna’s decorations took off when she posted a picture of her now famous Halloween wreath. While virality of the kind Hanna experienced then is familiar to most people today, it wasn’t when her wreath blew up.

“It really showed me, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m making this stuff at home and I’m not sharing this stuff. And I just shared this and everyone is flipping out about it.’” Hanna wanted to show that Halloween in particular — often viewed as a scary, gory holiday — could have a sophisticated flair. As a budding content creator, Hanna said the desire to craft beautiful things expanded into showing people that you don’t “have to have a lot of money to create warm things in your home.”

“You can feel proud of something that you buy at the Dollar Store,” she says. “You can feel inspired by pieces that maybe you look at, and you’re like, ‘I don’t even know what I would do with this.’ But if you really put your mind to it, you can figure it out.”

Social media, she says, is a breeding ground for feelings of inferiority when individuals feel as though they can’t compete with the levels of wealth often displayed online, which is why Hanna puts together elegant displays using budget items. She enjoys creating all different kinds of DIYs so that families have “options.”

“I want them to look at my page and say, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of ideas here. Maybe I can take one or two this season.’ People have jobs, they have families, so I want to be looked at as a source to go to quickly to figure out what they want to do, and then they can implement it,” she explains.

A core tenet of Hanna’s creations is pieces that can be reused over and over again in a variety of different settings.

“The whole point of a holiday is to celebrate and to get together and host and have friends and family over, but I think sometimes that can feel really overwhelming to people,” the hostess adds. “So I try to break down ideas to give them a showstopper idea, like a conversation starter, but they don’t have to spend a lot of money.”

She loves creating a good tower centerpiece that can be easily readjusted every time a new holiday rolls around. Adorning a styrofoam tower with treats and goodies, then accessorizing based on the season, is one of Hanna’s simple hacks for people who want to host while still saving time and money.

Hanna advises that those looking to create decoration scapes as elaborate as her own focus on areas of their home where they spend the most time.

“If you’re in the living room a lot, then start there because wherever you’re going to feel the magic more of what you’re investing in,” she says. “And I do think there’s a time and place, like for Christmas, I do think you can invest in a good tree and it will last you years. But you don’t necessarily have to buy every trendy ornament. You can decorate your tree… I mean, ornaments are expensive.”

“So I like using tinsel, reusing tinsel because we don’t want to put the tinsel in the landfills. But I like using ribbon and tying bows. And you can do DIY ornaments. You go to Hobby Lobby and you can buy a huge thing of the acrylic ornaments and you can put paint and swirl paint in them, and that can be a beautiful tree.”

Investing a little bit more money in a larger piece that will sit in one of those higher-trafficked rooms is a good start, advises Hanna, but she’s also adamant that she “wouldn’t spend more than a couple hundred dollars on that stuff.” To her, it isn’t necessary when there is plenty that can be created by piecing together cheaper items. “I like using tinsel, reusing tinsel. I like using ribbon and tying bows. And you can do DIY ornaments. You go to Hobby Lobby and you can buy a huge thing of the acrylic ornaments and you can put paint and swirl paint in them, and that can be a beautiful tree,” she lists off.

Overall, Hanna says, she tries to be conscious of what she’s spending. She’s aware that while this is her living, many other people have other considerations to tend to. “They’re worried about their kids going to school, they’re worried about their jobs and what have you,” she says. “So I think that just giving them these little tips and tricks and ideas helps them save money and helps me save money in the process because this is what I’m creating for my own home.”

It’s frustrating, says Hanna, when she started seeing big box stores selling kits to make a version of her DIY Halloween wreath at a premium. However, Hanna says that it keeps her on her toes.

“I have to just keep reinventing everything. I’m changing it up every year. I have to think, ‘What’s next? Okay, I’m not sharing that again because now that’s in the store, so let me go figure something else out.’ ”

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