Instead of buying an umbrella base stand I wanted to see if I could build one using materials I had around the house. The umbrella stand I came up with is shown in the following photo:

Building this umbrella stand was very easy and the materials cost $5 or less (assuming you already have a spade bit).

The base of the umbrella stand will be a five gallon bucket which you can get at any hardware store. To give the bucket / base weight and make it stable, I added sand, which you can also get at a hardware store. You can get a 50 pound bag of sand for $5 or less from a hardware store, or just get some you might have lying around in the yard. You also could potentially use dirt, but it will be less fine and not work as well.

To hold the umbrella in place a board is put on top of the bucket and a hole is cut in the board to fit the umbrella pole.  It is ideal to drill the hole the same size as the umbrella pole diameter so that the pole is held snugly in place.  To drill the hole wide enough you will need to use a spade bit on your electric drill.  A spade bit looks like this:

Spade bits are pretty common, you can get a set of spade bits on Amazon here: DEWALT DW1587 6 Bit 3/8-Inch to 1-Inch Spade Drill Bit Assortment

The next step is to attach the board which will hold the umbrella to the bucket.  I used a bracket on each side of the bucket, which I attached to both the board and the bucket with a screw.  Brackets like the one I used can be found on Amazon here and are shown in the picture below: Smbbit Stainless Steel Shelf Support Corner Brace Angle Bracket Angle Code Right Angle 6 hole, 38mm x30mm x1.3mm(thick) (8Pack)

The last step, which is optional, is to paint the stand so that it is more ascetically pleasing.  Since I was painting plastic, metal and wood all together I decided to just use spray paint.

And with that you are done on your umbrella stand is complete. They whole project should not take more than an hour, even if you do decide to paint the umbrella stand.

A video summarizing how to make the umbrella stand can be found here.