Hope these ideas help
I am not sure if these will give you any ideas but here are a couple of hides that I made from various things.
The first one is a wire-frame with a hole in the top covered in string. I laboriously made the wire frame myself from garden wire but you can easily find an old lamp shade and use the frame from that and weave string or raffia round it. I only thought about the lamp shade option once I had finished it and thought it looked like one of the old shades my aunt used to make years ago.
The larger squarish one is made from the big Swedish furniture store, (not sure if I am allowed to use names but I think anyone would guess what I meant by that without me getting into trouble). They are kitchen shelves which are meant to put plates and cups on, I used the smaller of the shelves and the supports from the bigger plate shelf. Turned them upside down and glued them together as in the picture. Turned it the right way up, cut a Grocery stores Jute shopping bag to the right size and sewed it to the frame.
Once these are decorated with a few bits of silk plants they will look fine and the snake will become curious about them.
My snake likes to hide in the little holes in the brick, or did until I took the plant and hung it up towards the top of the viv, but once I get another one and drape it over the brink it will probably start using it again.
I am sure that you can follow my idea or create some of your own. Upturned plant pots are quite good, especially terracotta ones because they warm up when they are put above a heat mat, depending on the size of your snake you might need to either enlarge the hole or make another one in the side but you must make sure that you sand paper any sharp edges before you put it back into the vivarium.
Plastic Air freshener holders, once you clear the battery holder and everything else out of it enlarge the holt at the top of it and stick some aspen shredding inside of it using aquarium sealant you can stick the two halves together, put some more aquarium sealant all over them and then wind string or raffia around them and them, these ones are even designed to hang on wall so have a little hole for the screw already in them at the back.
I used a metal coat hangar and sponge insulation for the vines in one of my vivs just to add a different level for my male corn snake and i used some plaited string to hold them up. The only reason they are set so regimentally level is because at the moment he is really tiny and it means he can go from the plants at the top onto something as opposed to just dropping from them down to the floor of the viv which bothered me a bit.
Other ideas for hides:
Toilet roll cores
Aluminium foil roll cores are slightly longer than the toilet ones
Old plastic piping like the stuff they use for drains etc.
Plastic food cartons, round or square ones with a hole cut in them.
Two old CD cases half opened and stuck together make a nice little square box with an open side for the snake to go it, but you do have to weight these down as they are very light
Any of these can be covered with raffia, string or some of the substrate you are already using.
Have a look around your house, at anything in general and use your imagination, get creative that is the best way to save a bit of money and have something that no one else has and is nice and original. Just remember to wash and sterilize everything that you use and make sure that there are no sharp edges on anything
just wash it out and cut a hole for a door. For adults or my pythons I use cheap cat litter boxes or dishwashing pans with a door cut out and turned upside down and of course as mentioned everywhere, the old standby, ceral boxes..snakes don't care what it looks like is my theory
