Project 29 Week 30 – Flower Party Lights

Wednesday greetings everyone!  Today is a very special day, it is Basel’s First Birthday!! In honor of his birthday, I decided to make a fun and festive little project, using one of his favorite materials, cardboard egg cartons.  (Ok ok, so he prefers to tear them up and chew on them, while I prefer to use them for crafts.  That still counts as a favorite material.  I gave him the top piece to tear up, I’m sure in his little puppy mind he’s helping, something about speeding up the biodegrading process…)  Anyway, the result of MY work with the egg cartons were some adorable little festive flower party lights, perfect for any birthday party!  (Basel’s result was a messy pile of shredded pieces.  Which he then rolled around in because that’s clearly the best way to celebrate all that hard work shredding.)

The project is pretty simple, (and inspired by a post I found on Pinterest) but its a really fun way to reuse those egg cartons everyone has lying around (or am I the only one?) and it adds a bit of pizzaz to a standard string of Christmas lights you light ALSO have lying around.  Basically you take the bottom half of an egg carton.  Then I sliced through the center of each egg bulge so that I had just the center bit, the piece between each egg, on its own.  Basically you cut each egg bulge in half one direction, then in half the other direction, which leaves you with a center piece that has 1/4 of an egg bulge on each side.  (Does that make sense?)  You could probably cut away a bit more of each bulge for more delicately shaped flowers, but I kind of liked the fact that these were formed directly 100% from the original egg carton shape.  Then you simply poke a small hole, or cut an X, into the tip of your flower, and push your small light bulb through.  No need to add any glue, the egg carton is light enough that it stays in place.

I love the shadows that are created on the surface that the lights are resting on.  This project would probably look a bit cooler with white lights but it is fun and festive using the colored lights, which are the only ones I happened to have in my apartment.

I’m working on a big finale project, but its been a bit tricky since I just started teaching full time on Monday.  But, I have a shorter day tomorrow, so I am going to try and finish up my big finale project and then get it photographed on Friday, just in time to post on Saturday!!  So stay tuned and check back, and hopefully we can all celebrate the end of my 30x30x3 journey on a high note!

Ciao, Allison