Simple Homemade Lightbulb Ornaments

Following the tradition my parents started for us, I try to get my kids a new ornament each year.  Something personal and special.  But, after hours and hours of walking through aisles of gorgeous ornaments at stores, I’ve often come up short, unable to find “the perfect ornament”.  So, last year I decided to make the ornaments and, if I do say so myself, they are my absolute favorites.

I made them from regular old incandescent lightbulbs and they are very simple.  In fact, last year, I remembered at around 10 pm on Christmas Eve that I had never made the ornaments.  Yikes!  No problem.  I had all the materials on hand.  I was surprised when they only took me about 30 minutes total for all 4.

What you’ll need:  lightbulbs, acrylic paint, glue (a glue gun works best), a fine point sharpie marker, scraps of fabric, embellishments (can be anything…get creative…see below for specifics on each ornament)

For the penguin, paint the entire bulb white.  Then, outline the body with black sharpie and paint the rest of the bulb black.  For the hat, I used a small scrap of fleece and sewed it into a tube.  I cut a few frays in the top and tied it with a piece of embroidery floss.  I happened to have googly eyes, but you could draw them on as well.  For the beak, I cut out a diamond shape out of a piece of orange felt and folded it in half.

For Santa, paint the entire bulb white.  Painting the entire bulb first strengthens the bulb.  Then, paint a peach colored face.  For the hat, I made a tube out of red fleece and used a pipe cleaner for the brim.  I didn’t have any white pom poms on hand, so I scrunched another white pipe cleaner into a ball and voila!  I had a pom pom.  For the beard and hair, I pulled apart cotton balls and sporadically glued them on all over the back and the bottom half of the face.

For the reindeer, paint the entire bulb brown.  Cut antlers out of foam and glue on.  Use googly eyes or paint your own.  Use a red pom pom for the nose and draw on the smile with a sharpie.  This is definitely the easiest of all!

The Snowman was also very simple. I painted the bulb with 2 coats of white to make it especially white.  I used scraps for the hat and scarf.  The hat was made just like the Penguin’s:  A tube tied with embroidery floss.  On this one, I just drew the eyes with the sharpie and cut out a felt carrot nose.

When you’re finished, just sew or glue a loop of thread, yarn or embroidery floss to the hat or top of the ornament to hang on the tree. Happy Ornament Making! I’ll let you know soon what this year’s ornament will be.