Lighting Inspirations for Holidays

Don't spend hundreds of dollars on decorations, take notes from your kids; making it yourself is tons of fun, and for the right artist it is also very fashionable. Now, I don't mean pull out your grade school pencil box and make a paper pilgrim hat or handprint turkey feathers; we are adults now after all. You can have fun making your own decorations which will leave your guests impressed, and you with a total sense of accomplishment.

Every holiday uses strings of lights nowadays. For Independence Day we put out red, white, and blue light strings, multi-color strings with beads for May Day, pumpkins, or skulls for Halloween. It is time to make light covers for Thanksgiving. After Christmas you can get strings of lights fairly cheap, most craft and retail stores don't want those items sitting in storage getting dusty for a year. This year be sure to pick up several strings of white lights and multicolored lights, you can make a string for every holiday, and reuse them as needed. To make your decorations stay on purchase light covers with a fluted shape, the decorations can be designed to fit over the covers saving you the trouble of making them secure to the lights without touching the bulbs. Can't find the fluted covers? Make covers with plastic straws. The straw needs to be big enough to cover the light without touching the bulb. Simply cut them just long enough to slip over the base of the light without touching the bulb and design your decorations to move away from the bulb as it progresses from the straw.

For Thanksgiving I would suggest pumpkins and turkeys. They are simple to design, pumpkins you can get at Halloween, scrape away the black paint and use orange to make the jack-o-lantern into a harvest pumpkin. Use wax paper and permanent marker to make your shapes. Cookie cutters are perfect for stencils. Once your creation is cut out color it as you like. Or use regular paper and laminate the finished design. Make sure your design is three dimensional, big enough to fit well away from the bulb and small enough to wrap around the light cover. Once completed simply slip the light cover over the bulb and hang the entire string where it will accent your holiday décor. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.