Better late than never, a project for Christmas...

Now I know that it's pretty much the end of January, but hang in there.

I did mean to write about last years Christmas decorations, but as you know time marches on and before you know it the moments passed.

So on that note this post is one to put on your list of stuff to make for this Christmas (and yes I know it's a way away, but time marches on remember)

For years we've been making our own decorations, and not just for Christmas but for various other times of year (like Halloween) and I decided I'd make something for the tree and it's something I've been meaning to make for a while.

Here they are -

Light bulbs.

Yes I made wooden light bulb style ornaments for the tree, which I'm pleased with, I think they worked well and they are a good addition to our decoration collection.

I did try to make them from a bit of scrap Pine at first, but I wasn't happy with the end results, so I recycled a bit of Beech from an old table leg, so not only do these look good on a tree, they were free, all it cost really was a bit of time.

First draft, looks bulb like - 

Not bad, but not quite right.

As I said the Pine didn't work well as I couldn't get a finish I was happy with, especially when I applied the wood dye, but the Beech worked a lot better.

Here's the Beech, I didn't use a hole leg, just a couple of sections off one end - 

Not much to say really, it's an old table leg.

First two turned and the dye applied - 

Not quite identical, but close enough.

The dye I mixed myself, I have a number of purpose bought wood dyes, but not in purple which is one of the colours we use on the tree every year, not loads of it, just little bits of purple here and there.

To make the purple I simply mixed a bit of blue and red wood dye together (blue and red make purple if you didn't know that already) I did have to tweak it slightly until I was happy with the colour, but I think it worked, and the grain still shows through the dye, which I wanted.

I have also in the passed experimented with printer inks for dying wood, these also work well, and you can sometimes pick up cheap refill kits from places like poundland.

For the part of the bulb that's meant to look like the screw in part I used some silver paint, we have various pots of paint about the house, the one I used is cheap to buy, about £1.99 from our local diy shop and it dries quickly and is water based.

I made some little eyes for each bulb so that we could thread some natural string through them and hang them on the tree, I just used some silver garden wire for this.

Making the eyes - 

Very easy to do.

The eyes are just a bit of wire twisted round to form a loop, it's easy to do, just twist a bit of garden wire around something round, in my case it was a wire staple, which was the first thing I grabbed and clamped into my vice, but a nail would do just as well.

To fix the eyes into the bulbs I drilled small hole and twisted them in, they are very secure, but you could always add a little glue to make sure they don't pull out.

And there you have it, I made six in all, unfortunately we couldn't hang two of the decorations on our tree because although they weren't huge they did weigh a fair bit (I made them from Laurel) and as we decided to get a real tree this year (one with roots, so we can use it again and again) it wasn't able to take the weight of them, maybe next year when it's a bit bigger.

Obviously this is a project for a lathe, but if you know someone who has a lathe or maybe you're a member of a club that does wood working then perhaps you could have a go, or maybe this year will be the year you decide to learn how to turn wood and you'll get your own lathe?

I have also made a light bulb shaped pull for the light cord in our bathroom, which I though was quite funny, because it turns on a light and it's light bulb shaped... ... but no one else thought so.

Pull cord bulb - 

Thanks for reading this very late or very early Christmas post.

Wooden star christmas decorations.

For a while my wife has wanted some wooden star Christmas decorations and to be honest I haven't managed to get around to making any until now, I always seem to be doing other things or time just seems to run out.

But I've finally managed it -

Very festive.

The lights on the right hand side one are brighter because I made that one last so the batteries are a bit fresher.

I did only mean to make one large star, but I ended up making two large stars, a small star and two small stars for the tree.

Rather than cut out a star shape from a sheet of wood I have made these stars in sections glued together, the three in the picture above also have lights in.

I spent a grand total of four pounds on lights for these, I bought the small sets of led lights you can get from pound shops rather than wire up a load of led's from scratch.

It would have only been three pounds but I forgot how to do maths and for some reason didn't realise that if you have five points and you want to put five lights in each point you're going to need twenty five lights, and not twenty, so I had to buy an extra set of lights.

First I made some templates of various sized star sections, and one complete star, which I didn't actually use, the idea being that I would draw round the templates onto some wood and then cut out the sections and stick them together.

Templates, just printed out and stuck onto card - 

You can find star templates online.

I decided to make a test star first, the main reason was because I wanted the grain of the wood to run in line with each point, rather than in the same direction over the entire star, this is why I made them in sections rather than cut them out of a sheet of ply or some other type of material.

Test star sections cut - 

They need to be sanded.

I cut each section out roughly using my bandsaw, but any type of saw will do and then I sanded each section to the pencil lines using my bench sander, you could just as easily use a block of wood and some sand paper to finish each section, it'll just take a bit longer.

Sanding each section to the pencil marks makes for a tighter fit with no gaps where the sections meet in the centre.

Once that was done I glued the sections together to see what the finished stars might look like.

Test star finished - 

Not bad.

Once I was happy with the test star and that I'd got the grain of the wood to run in the right directions it was time to make things a bit bigger, to make the larger stars I used some wood from an old pallet and in the end the large stars measure about 14 inches across, so they are quite big, I also used the off cuts to make the stars for the tree in the same way, just smaller.

Marking out the sections (using one of the templates I made) - 

Nice and easy.

Once you have five sections cut out and sanded all you need to do then is glue them together, I've used wood glue, but you could use epoxy or most other types of glue, the only difference really is the time you need to allow for the glue to set.

Test star, one large star and one tree star glued, ready for sanding - 

Nearly done.

To fit the lights all I've done is to mark out five points on each section of the star and drill a hole the same size as the led lights, in this case that was about 5mm and meant the led's were a snug fit in each hole.

Marking out where the lights will go - 

You can just make out the pencil marks.

A quick test - 

It works well I think.

As you can see I went for quite a uniform arrangement of lights, there's no reason you can't be more random, had I gone for a random arrangement I could have got away with just using twenty led's on each star.

Once I'd drilled all the holes I needed I sanded the pencil marks off each star and then gave each one a coat of clear wax to bring out the grain of the wood and then on was on to tidying the wires up a bit.

Now for some tidying up - 

Hot glue to the rescue.

Using a glue gun I stuck the wires to the wood to stop them moving about, I also stuck the battery packs to the wood as well, but in such a way that I can still get the covers off to change the batteries.

You can see in the picture above where I had to join the extra led lights, this was an easy job, all I did was cut of five lights and then join them to the other ones to make a string of twenty five.

Gluing done - 

Keeps the wires out of the way.

And that's about it really, there are numerous ways this could be done, I may end up making them into light boxes so that the wiring is hidden a little better, but as they are they look nice when lit up and we like them, and it goes with our tradition of making some kind of decoration for Christmas every year, I even used the test star and put some of the spare lights in that in a random pattern.

Waste not, want not - 

I'm actually quite pleased with them.

The small ones I made for the tree don't have lights, but there's no reason they couldn't have lights fitted, although you'd want to use smaller led's.

These I made in the same way as the light up stars, they're just smaller and I've used some natural fibre string to hang them on the tree with.

Tree star, I made two of these - 

These go well with our other homemade decorations.

And there you have it, a cheap and simple Christmas decoration, that could also be used in a kids room on a dressing table or chest of drawers as a year round decoration.

Merry Christmas - 

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading.

Tree decorations made from copper tube ...

This year I've had a go at making some decorations for our Christmas tree from some old copper tube, it's not the first time I've used copper tube for a project, but it has to be said it's normally for siege engine parts, perhaps not all that festive, unless you intend to fire mince pies at the neighbours.


It has to be said I'm still not sure if I'm happy with them -

Polished and ready for the tree.

You might be thinking they don't look very tube like, well you'd be right, but an easy way to get small sheets of metal for crafting is to use old tubing, in this case copper, but you can do this with more or less any metal tube, as long as the tubing isn't very thick, trying this with a scaffolding pole won't work because of the thickness of the tubes walls, and some metals are easier to bend than others, you will need a hacksaw or a pipe cutting tool to do this, along with two sets of pliers and a hammer, and some metal cutters (tin snips) for cutting the metal once it's been flattened and a shape marked out, and lastly a drill for drilling a hole for hanging them.

It's not that hard to turn tube into decoration - 

From tube to decoration.

To turn a bit of copper tube into a small sheet is easy, firstly you need to measure round the tube to find out it's circumference, this is easy to do with a flexible tape measure.

Measuring the tube - 

In this case it's 7cm.

Once you have the measurement (for the tube I used it was 7cm) you then need to measure a length of tube that is the same, so for me 7cm in length, then cut the tube.

Next you need to cut the tube length ways - 

Cut the tube from one end to the other.

 Again a hacksaw is ideal for this, or you can use a metal cutting disc in a multi tool (like a dremel) once you've cut the tube you need to bend it out with the pliers.

Bending the tube - 

Bit of brute force required.

Use the pliers to bend the tube outwards, then once it's more or less flat use a hammer to flatten it out, and when you're finished you should have a more or less square sheet of metal.

My metal ready for marking - 

Simple shapes are easy to cut out.

For the shape I just used one of my wife's pastry cutters as a template, and using a scriber (a pointed tool for marking metal) I marked out the shape, you can also use a marker pen to mark out the metal.

Shape marked out - 

Ready for cutting.

Tin snips (metal cutters) ready - 

I've had these for ages.

You get a set of tin snips online for as little as £5 and they are very handy for cutting metal. 

Cutting out the shape is easy enough, it's like using scissors, but with a bit more effort involved.

Here's my shape cut out - 

Ready for stamping.

It's a good idea to use thick gloves when cutting out metal as it can be sharp, and once you've cut out a shape it's also a good idea to either smooth off any sharp edges with a file, or some sand paper to avoid cut fingers, you can also use sandpaper to clean the metal up a bit before polishing.

For the lettering I used some letter stamps I have, these can be picked up cheaply from places like Screwfix or online, and to use them is just a case of working out what you want to stamp out and then giving the end of the stamp a good smack with a hammer, thicker metal will require more of a smack to get the letters to come out.

One of the decorations with just lettering - 

You can stamp anything you like onto the metal.

The heart shapes on some of the decorations were made by drilling three holes into the metal, two side by side with one underneath.

Starting the heart shape - 

Holes drilled, now for some filing.

Once I'd drilled the three holes I just used a small file to make a heart shape, it doesn't take long, and softer metals will be easier to file.

Heart shape done - 

Sort of heart shaped.

To hang the decoration on the tree I drilled a small hole in the top and used some twisted copper wire to make a loop, but string would do just as well, or ribbon, and you don't have to hang them from the top, you could make the hole off centre so the shape sits at an angle on the tree.

I've polished my decorations, any metal polish will do for this, most supermarkets sell some kind of polish for metal, or you can use some fine sandpaper for a brushed look, or just leave them.

Here's a finished one on the tree - 

Shiny.

I'm hoping to get a couple of posts done before Christmas day on the wooden things I've made for the kids stockings this year, two of the projects can be done in next to no time, so stay tuned.


Thanks for reading.