Star Lights

I thought seen as this is a craft blog maybe I should actually put some craft posts up! 

I made this pair of star lamps for Christmas but I think they are pretty and they are going to stay up all year round. Plus they give off a nice light so when me and the O/H are watching TV we can just put these on for backlight. They are about 40cm tall, so not too big and are kind of straight forward to make.

I don’t know whether it’s best to make a list of needed items but there is only 3 things so…

First of all I used an A1 sheet of thick silver card (recommend minimum 3mm thick) from any good craft shop (I got 2 stars out of one A1 sheet). Then a pack of 20 bulb LED lights per star, I think any colour will look nice. You will need whatever glue you find best for your card crafts, this star does free stand so make sure the glue is up for that! Oh and whatever batteries your LED lights take otherwise, like me, you will be running to the shop after spending time on this craft because you forgot them!

Right, the hard part is the star shape so I will try my best for you:

Draw a 40cm diameter circle using a compass or if you have anything circular that size just draw round that! Make sure to mark the centre. Then using a protractor divide the circle into 5 equal sections (67 degrees will give you perfect sections) and join each point to its 2 opposite points. It doesn’t write well but hopefully it looked obvious when it’s drawn up on the card otherwise you could print this off:

Just make sure that when you print it of it measure 40cm from point to point!

You will then need to cut out 10 rectangles 6cm by 14.5cm. On the star you will need to pierce 20 holes evenly around the star to pop the bulbs through but don’t make them too big otherwise the bulbs will pop out! Try and place them about 1cm in from the edge of the star. You could really put as many lights in it as you wanted but I think it looks nice with just the outside (if you do put more in make sure you get fairy lights with the amount of bulbs per hole needed!).

Glue the rectangles around the edges of the star so you end up with a box type star without a lid. All the silver should be on the outside like so:

Pop your lights in the holes, you could fix the lights in place with glue if you like and I glued the battery pack to the inside of one of the bottom star points. Batteries in and away you go!!!

I like the stars as they work in my sitting room but you could do other shapes they just need a flat bottom so they can stand upright. They are lightweight so could be mounted on the wall with a simple picture hook (therefore wouldn’t need a flat bottom) and because they are LED the bulbs don’t heat up so no fire hazard there!

I hope for a first craft tutorial this is ok and makes sense!