Light ‘Bulbles’ Christmas Crafting

One of my favourite things about Christmas is seeing all the trees lit and decorated. As we head towards the Winter solstice on the 21st, the days are getting shorter and shorter. A Christmas tree is such a wonderful way to brighten up the living room and give it a warm, cheerful glow.

Christmas Decorations

One of our favourite activities this year is Christmas Tree spotting where we get points for each tree on the walk to and from town. It sure does make the journey quicker for Lil’ L!

Christmas Decorations

This year, we decided to buy a real tree again. I absolutely love the smell of real Christmas trees! As is traditional in our house, the boys fetched the tree and decorated it to surprise me. It looks utterly beautiful! It’s covered in white lights, a couple of strings of gold tinsel, and gold and red baubles. There are a few fun decorations that we’ve collected over the years, like this cute Santa…

Christmas Decorations

But I was surprised to find that there were a couple of new additions to the tree…

Santa Lightbulb

Snowman Lightbulb

Aren’t they sweet? Every time I look at them, they make me smile so much!

It turns out that the boys made them from old lightbulbs that they found in the garage! A few weeks ago, we were invited to take part in a competition by LightBulbs Direct to turn old dud lightbulbs into Christmas decorations. The boys love crafts, so they were definitely up for the challenge (I love admiring other people’s creations as sadly I can’t draw or craft for toffee :/)

Here’s my hubbie to explain how he & Lil’ L made them…

Lightbulbs. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before that they’d make great Christmas baubles. And there are so many different ways to decorate them; paint, glitter, marker pens…

But what about the design? A nice pattern of holly, reindeers and Christmas trees? Something sparkly? No. For me, there are two things that a classic lightbulb naturally lends itself to being. Two things that share the same bulbous, curvaceous profile and shout Christmas. It’s obvious, isn’t it? OK, maybe not. I’m thinking of snowmen and the rotund figure of Father Christmas…

A little bit of white spray paint and a lightbulb is already practically a snowman. Paint a bayonet fixing black and you’re halfway to a classic snowman top hat, it just needs a brim. A couple of googly eyes, buttons and a scarf and you’re there. Unmistakably a snowman, straight out of a Christmas card.

Add some red paint and you’re headed in another direction. Choose a bulb with a screw fitting and this time you’re well on your way to a bobble hat. White beard, cheeky grin, a nice big black belt and there he is. Santa!

I enjoyed doing these with littl’un. Nice bit of Christmas crafty fun. And now the Christmas tree has got a few more decorations hiding in the branches. Next year we’ll bring them down from the loft with the other decorations and we’ll remember making them. A fun reminder from Christmas 2014.

Happy Christmas everyone and Best Wishes for the New Year, M&L, Bath, UK

The competition ends at midnight tonight! Good luck boys xx