DIY Christmas Cookie Cutter Lights Garland
I love to decorate with lights over dark winter nights. And I decided to give a plain string of fairy lights a festive makeover by adding Christmas shapes.
I used shrink plastics for this. I first discovered Shrink plastics (Shrinky dinks) when I was a child in the '70s and thought they were magic! My love for shrink plastic crafts has not waned and I still use them as an adult.
After a hunt through my kitchen cupboards, I dug out all my old Christmas cookie cutters.
I drew around the cookie-cutter shapes onto clear shrink plastic sheets.
I then cut out the shapes.
Then using colored Sharpie pens, I coloured in the various cookie-cutter shapes. This is a fun craft to do with kids at Christmas, they will enjoy the coloring.
I made sure I had a variety of Christmas shapes. If you don't have a cookie-cutter you can just draw the shapes or print them for free from my blog (link in bio at the end).
Next, this is when the magic bit happens. Place all the plastic shapes on a non-stick oven tray and then stick them in the oven to shrink.
If you look through the glass in the oven door you will see the plastic shapes curl up and then straighten out again. Once the shapes are flat again they are done.
Check the instructions that came with the shrink plastic to see how long you need to put them in the oven and at what temperature. With the sheets, I used the oven temperature was 160c and they took about 2 mins to shrink.
As the plastic shapes shrink the colors will intensify too.
Next, using a hot glue gun, I glued the shapes to the fairy lights wire. I stuck one shrink plastic shape over every bulb.
I ended up with a fun garland of Christmas shaped lights.
You can print the shapes from my blog for free.
My son loved them and hangs them in his bedroom. He helped me make some of the shapes.
This isn't the first time I have used cookie cutter shapes for Christmas crafts. My very popular cute upcycled sweater ornaments (see here) were made with cookie cutters.
If you are looking for more Christmas lights check out my easy upcycled Christmas bottle lights.
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Such a clever idea!!!
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So adorable! Adding to my list of things to work on after Christmas. Will have lots of things to use next year as my list is growing every day!
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Thank you, I have Valentine's version of the lights (see here) you could try in the meantime.
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