on December 20, 2016Recycled Christmas fairy lights
Christmas is almost here! Today I want to show you 4 different ways to make recycled Christmas fairy lights by decorating basic lights with recycled materials.
You can buy basic fairy lights in loads of different places at the moment, so here are some original ways to decorate them and turn them into these recycled Christmas fairy lights. It’s best if you can get LED lights, as these use less energy and will heat up less, so reduce the risk of a fire hazard.
1. Nespresso capsules
These faily lights are decorated with nespresso capsules to give the impression of many colourful Christmas bells. Punch a small hole in the top of each nespresso capsule and push one light through each. You could use many different colours, but since my lights were already multicoloured, I used just one colour.
2. Egg cartons
I wrote a tutorial a little while ago on how to make roses out of recycled egg cartons. You can use this same technique to decorate fairy lights. Just punch a hole through each of the egg carton layers and push a light through so it sits in the centre of the rose.
3. Plastic bottle tops
These plastic tops of bottles are a really good way of adding loads of colour to some lights.
To make these, I drilled a hole the width of my lights into the side of some plastic bottle tops to attach them to the lights. I had a little trouble drilling into the plastic, but I succeeded by first punching a small hole with an awl, then making it bigger with a small drill bit, then finally widening the hole again with the correct sized drill bit.
4. Recycled Paper
You can make these origami cubes out of any kind of recycled paper, and push them over fairy lights to make them look like a row of little paper lanterns. Follow the video below to make these origami shapes, or try a different origami pattern altogether.
I hope these ideas for recycled fairy lights have given you some inspiration for your Christmas decorations. Mix and match these ideas with others for a merry, colourful and recycled Christmas!
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