Christmas crafts gingerbread handmade Recycled crafts tutorial

Crafting with lightbulbs

Have you ever crafted with a light bulb before? I was set a challenge from LightBulbs-Direct to redecorate an old and plain light bulb into an exciting new Christmas ‘light bulble’ bauble! Easy. I turned to Pinterest and found tons of inspiration, so much in fact it took me a while to decide exactly what to make.

Lightbulbs are always burning out in our house so there was actually a couple by the back door waiting to go out with the recycling. I chose the largest one I could and gave it a light spray with a white acrylic primer to cover it completely. Then I made a stand from an old cardboard box and left it to dry.

The next step was to give my lightbulb a coat of brown acrylic paint in a lovely burnt umber shade. Can you tell what it is yet?

painting a lightbulb

I gave it two coats of the burnt umber to ensure the  light bulb was evenly covered. Then I started to add some features – two eyes, a mouth, rosy cheeks and a little headband. It’s a girl!

gingerbread lightbulb

When the features had dried I added a band of white ricrac with some PVA glue and finished the whole thing with a Christmassy bow.

gingerbread lightbulb

What do you think? I really love it and can see myself making a whole family of gingerbread people!

3 Comments

  • Reply
    Carolin
    December 20, 2013 at 11:23 pm

    I love this, such a cute cute idea and what a fantastic way of upcycling an old light bulb x

  • Reply
    Jen
    December 20, 2013 at 11:27 pm

    Awww, that’s so cute, very inventive!

  • Reply
    Love All Blogs
    December 24, 2013 at 5:10 pm

    So lovely! I can imagine a whole tree full!

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