Twinkle lights can bring an immediate sense of warmth and joy to a room like no other. I love to adorn every room with them when it comes times for the holidays — and I’ve been known to drape some here and there even when the onset of winter season is way off in the distance.
Today I’m combining twinkle lights with another one of my decor loves — lace — for a beautiful decoration that’s perfect for this time of year. Here’s how to make your own lace twinkle lights!
Materials: Water balloons, lace fabric, fabric stiffener, petroleum jelly, scissors, and a needle or pin.
1. First, Cut your lace fabric into pieces or strips — they can be as long, short, wide, or narrow as you like. Try a couple different sizes and shapes, and see what works best for you.
2. Blow up your water balloons with air and coat them in a layer of petroleum jelly. The water balloons will determine the shape of the lace spheres, so keep this in mind when it comes to size. I found that smaller balloons (like the one on the right) looked best in the end.
3. Submerge a piece of lace into the fabric stiffener and wrap it around a balloon.
4. Keep wrapping until the balloon is full covered (you can overlap fabric if necessary), leaving the knotted portion of the balloon visible. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each of your balloons, then let them sit for at least 8 hours to dry — I let mine sit overnight.
5. Once the material has dried and hardened, use a needle or pin to pop each balloon, and pull the balloons out through the pre-existing hole.
6. You can pop your twinkle light right into this hole. My lace spheres all seemed to stay put on their own, but you’re having trouble getting yours to stay on your twinkle lights, you can use a needle and thread to stitch up the opening over the wire, as shown below.
I liked alternating lace sphere and plain twinkle light in random segments. I also really like how each sphere turned out slightly differently — it adds to the whole hand-touched feeling.
More DIY ideas from the BLDG 25 Blog.
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Love it! I made these a while back, they are so lovely!
xx
MacK @ SoulMakes | Blog
How beautiful! I would keep these up year round in my bedroom or maybe out in the garden <3
xoxo Annejelina
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Oh wow. I was just looking for a new idea for string lights in my living room. I wanted to buy Chinese lanterns, but it would be so expensive to buy enough. This should be much cheaper, and prettier. Thank you!
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llloovvvee this!
These are awesome! You can also you Mod Podge. ;)
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This is way too cute! I love it
wonderful diy for the winter holidays : )
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I think these would look even better as Christmas ornaments
These are sooo stinking cute!! And creative. Thank you!
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This is such a cute idea, and it doesn’t eben sound like it’s too hard to do!
xx
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Would look cute on a romantic Christmas tree!
What a great idea. It looks so simple. Can’t wait to add them to my Christmas lights in my room.
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I love this! Definitely a new project for me to do! I am in France…with my boyfriend and son…ahhh! This has girly written all over it….AND I LOVE IT! Can’t wait to decorate my desk with it! …I get a little tired of the basketball decor lol. Thanks! :)
xoxo
Tried it soo hard!
Helloooo, Brigette. I am Valley from China. I am a super big fan of you. I have been kept reading your posts since last year. I absolutely love you! You are so creative and clever, always full of new ideas. You have gave me so much inspiration, and I am really grateful for that. I have learned a lot from you! I am fascinated by your lifestyle. I think your life is exactly my dream life. I write down many words that you said on my notebook for inspiration. Many of your DIY posts are so fantasti that I want to translate them into Chinese to share with more people. I translated your DIY Lace Twinkle Lights into Chinese, and it turns out that many people like it. They think you are so creative too! I want to send you an email to tell these to you, but I don’ t kown your emai address, and I can’t visit your blog. You are doing a great job! And I thank you so much! I love you! XOXO
Would you please tell me where you find actual twinkle lights and not blinking lights? Last Xmas I looked
everywhere for old fashioned twinkle lights and none were to be found. I also searched the net and
there were none. There are companies that advertise their lights as twinkle lights but they blink which
is not calming in the least.
Thanks for your time.