Okay, here is the tutorial for individually lighting up your tombstones or other creepy crawlies for Halloween!
- A cheap can of flat black spray paint. We purchased ours at Home Depot for $0.97! This covered about 36 soda cans.
- Clear holiday lights, size C9... they are usually a set of 25 lights per strand placed 1 foot apart.
- Clean soda cans, at least one per tombstone or whatever you want to highlight.
- A utility knife
- A unibit (this one is similar to ours) for your drill, we used a 3/16 to 7/8" to be able to get the socket of the lights to fit.
What to do:
- Drill the circle out of the bottom of the soda cans
- Cut the soda cans on the top with your utility knife, right where they are beginning to taper-- the edges will be sharp so lightly bend them inward if you wish.
- Spray the soda cans with the flat black paint and wait 1-2 hours to dry completely.
- Check that your strand of holiday lights works.
- If the things you would like to highlight are already set up, take the lights and the soda cans out to your display and figure out proper spacing.
- Do not plug in the light set yet.
- Take the bulbs out of the sockets you will not be using and set aside.
- Take the bulbs off the sockets you will be using. Place the soda can over the socket and replace the bulb. The size of the hole is such that the metal of the soda can will not touch any metal on the lights.
- Position lights and test.
- Wait for dark and enjoy the fruits of your labor! :-)
I would love to hear if you use this for your own Halloween setup! Please feel free to drop me a note with a link to your photos.
Only 25 days left until Halloween... do you know what you're going as??!?
Happy Crafting!
wow- what a clever idea!!!
ReplyDeleteOh man. I want to know how big your yard is to fit all of those tombstones! I might need to take a trip out to your place to check it out!
ReplyDeleteWow, looks great! Halloween is getting bigger and bigger over here in the UK and I would love to try this out this year. Did you make your own tombstones? If so, how did you make them??
ReplyDeleteThanks
Zoe (Wales, UK)
That is brilliant, inexpensive, easy to do with a few tools! Love, love it!! One question....how do you get the cans to lay that way? Did you pin them to the ground somehow, or did you flatten the edges? Also, your tombstones are awesome....any tutorial on that as well? Happy haunting!
ReplyDeleteJust tried this tonight and if you take one bulb out/off the whole string goes dead. Whet am I missing?
ReplyDeleteHi Lina!
ReplyDeleteIt is possible that your strings of lights do not have the same ability. On my boxes, there was a saying, something to the effect that I could take the bulbs out and others would still stay lit. My light strands are about three years old-- it might be an electrical safety feature of the manufacturer of your lights. Do you have any others you could try?
I hope you can find a way to do it. We love the effect in our yard.
Hettie, CelticMommy
Hi Michelle,
ReplyDeleteWe actually just position them each on their own to highlight the tombstone. With my grass being a bit high, they nestle nicely without positioning them at all. Also, I think we are going to try to do a tutorial for the tombstones. I am making new ones again this year, but I will try to go through pictures and see if I can get a tutorial up quicker.
Thanks for your comments!
Hettie, CelticMommt