It has become a custom for us to buy decorative lights during Christmas Eve every year. We all love to light up our homes inside and out with colorful lights to embrace the festive season with joy and warmth. This year, you give this trend a twist and sit back to make your own recycled Christmas lights to ensure eco-friendly and cost effective lighting adorns your home.

The biggest issue with decoration lights bought off the shelves is, after using these lights at Christmas or other occasions a couple of times, these lights are usually thrown away. If you have old Christmas lights at home which you are looking to throw away, you better think again. Instead of throwing them away, you can recycle these old Christmas lights to create cool decorative or other colorful lights for your home.

Here is a step by step method which will guide you in recycling these lights to create a completely new DIY accessory.

Things you’ll need

Besides old Christmas lights, you’ll need a screwdriver and pliers to cut the wires and disassemble the lights so that they can be used to create something new.

Begin by cutting the old light cords from both ends that are going to the lights and that are going to the electricity socket. Now unscrew the box and get out the circuit board from it.

Next up you will require all the light bulbs. Take out all the light bulbs from their sockets, take only the bulbs that are functional – it’s a time consuming affair surely. Once you have collected all the light bulbs, put them all in a case.

In this recycled Christmas lights project, you will not necessarily require the cords and sockets you have just separated from the bulbs, so you can dispose them off.

The mini light bulbs you have collected can be used to create a lot of Christmas decoration ornaments by connecting them to a cable or using them as a bunch. I have bunched the mini light bulbs together and have connected them by a single cable to a socket. Result is a variety of colored light which I will be attaching to the wreath on the main entrance.

You can follow the steps, but be reminded, playing with electricity can be dangerous. Do it only if you are experienced or have supervision.