Cheap, fun post-school Christmas crafts with lightbulbs!!

I’m such a big kid I start to get excited about Christmas when we hit November as I start putting ideas together for things to do with the Beans. I really want them to grow up with a magical feeling whenever they think of Christmas so we ride around in the car looking for Christmas lights to ooooh and ahhhhh over, we snuggle up under a blanket with the curtains closed and watch Christmas DVDs (we have nearly enough for one each day of December!!) and we do lots and lots of Christmas crafts.

Last year you may remember we had a go at decorating Lightbulbs to look like Christmas Baubles for a competition being run by Lightbulbs Direct and we WON!!! Well it would be rude not to enter again this year and we have so much fun doing it anyway. The Beans actually wanted to do the same Baubles as last year but then I explained to them what I thought we could do this year and thankfully they didn’t take too much persuasion.

We used up some old standard bayonet lightbulbs which were gathering dust in a cupboard and painted them all over with a couple of coats white acrylic paint which we bought from a craft shop for £2.99. I didn’t trust Jelly Bean not to drop his lightbulb on the floor so I gave him a plastic cup to paint instead. Once the paint had dried we set to work on decorating the Baubles with different designs using the Beans’ fingers pressed into Pigment Ink Pads which I had left over from making last year’s Christmas cards. If I remember rightly, I bought these from TK Maxx last year for about £5.99 but you can buy them from most craft shops.

Little Bean set to work on making her Reindeers pulling Santa’s sleigh and Beanie Boy made a ring of Elves to decorate his first Bauble. Little Bean was also desperate to do the string of fairy lights like we did on our Christmas cards and finally Beanie Boy and Jelly Bean created a Christmas Tree and a Christmas Wreath.

The Pigment Ink took quite a while to dry but once finished I added the finishing touchers using Sharpie pens and covered the tops of the lightbulbs with metallic tape, creating a loop to hang them with.

All in all I’m pretty impressed with the finished articles but more importantly the Beans LOVED making them and feel very proud of their creations once again.

DISCLAIMER: This is my entry to the ‘Light Bulbles’ Competition over at Lightbulbs-Direct.com  All words, images and opinions are my own and may not be copied without my permission. I have not been instructed what to write.