I wanted to make pumpkin fairy lights to light up the crochet witch that my daughter made for me, but I could not find anything I liked anywhere. I was not about to buy some lights. I'm not sure why, but that somehow didn't seem right. After raiding my craft drawers I only had to buy some paper!
You will need:
A string of 20 fairy lights
A hole punch
20 Brads [for some reason called "sample bag clips"(Musterbeutelklammern) in Germany]
Brown play-doh or plasticine or similar substance
1 sheet 50,5 * 70 cm Orange transparent paper (Transparent-Extrastark)
Scissors
Ruler
Cellotape
Pen/pencil (maybe!)
Method:
First make a trial strip. You need to do this because the bulb has to fit through the hole that you punch. Cut a 1.5 cm by 10 cm strip of orange paper and punch a hole into the end. Check if the bulb completely passes through. I found that the wires coming out of the bulb are wider than the bulb itself so I had to squeeze them a bit to get them through the hole. If your bulb does not fit through you may have to find a hole punch with a larger hole or a smaller bulb. If you have to buy the string of fairy lights and have a hole punch at home make a hole in a thick piece of paper and take it to the store with you so you can see if the bulb fits through it. Don't forget it you make a larger hole your strips will have to be wider. Adjust accordingly. Also don't forget if your bulb goes through too easily it will also come out easily. Mine just happened to be perfect. Once I had the paper in it did not just slip out.
Once you have the correct material cut 11 strips of orange paper per pumpkin (1.5 by 10 cm). It is not so important that the strips are exactly the same width, but it is important that they are exactly the same length (that is, for one pumpkin). Stack them and trim them if necessary.
Punch a hole in the bottom and in the top. If you have a single hole punch things will be easier, but if you don't you can use a regular hole punch. I have a single one somewhere in the house but no one seems to know where it is! When using a two hole punch you'll need to take the back off the hole punch so you can see where you are punching. Make a small dot at the place you want to be the center of the circle. Place the strip into the hole punch so that you can see the dot and then punch! You can stack a few together so things go quicker. In fact if you can punch all 11 in one go then it will be much easier for you to pass the bulb and the brad through the hole. It worked with my standard hole punch so I think it should work with most.
Pass the bulb through 11 strips of paper. The side you want to be on the outside is facing my hand in the picture. The side on the top will be inside the pumpkin. In the photo I passed one strip through, but later on I passed all 11 at the same time and to get it through the last bit I bent the paper a bit. This seemed to get it through.
And then pass a brad through the hole on the other side as shown in the picture.
Next distribute the strips to form what looks like a Chinese lantern (at least thats what my kids think it looks like). You may need to loosed the brad to make it easier to distribute the layers. It's easy enough to tighten it later. Squeeze it a bit to make it look more like a pumpkin.
Take a small blob of play-doh and form the stem. You may need to hold the wires together. My wires insisted on separating so I put a small piece of tape around them to hold them together.
And voila!!
PS. You may need to wait for your play-doh to dry before hanging your lanterns.
