During any holiday celebrations, every one will try to make a decoration that is unique and eye-catching to the people who see it. Making luminaries are one of the ways which is a popular tradition in the south. With beautiful and creative luminaries that you create by yourself using your own creativity will definitely makes the holidays even more memorable. Below are some tips and ideas in creating decorative luminaries for the upcoming festive holidays.
What you need:
- Votive candles (look for long burning)
- White paper bags, lunch-sized
- Sand or kitty litter
- Long lighter (the one normally use for the grill)
- Measuring tapes
- Plastic
Method:
- First of all, you need to decide the location that you want to place your luminaries whether on your sidewalk or driveway, porch or any where inside your house. You need to measure the area accordingly where for a closely area place it one foot between each other, while for wider area you can space the luminaries at least two feet between them. The same rules apply if you are decorating both sides of your pathway. The quantity of the paper bags needed depends on the size of the area that you have chosen.
- You can use a plain colour, green, orange or red lunch-size paper bags. Then, you have to unfold the paper bags and need to turn the openings with a little bit over of 1-inch to enable the bag to be more stable. In order to do that, you will need to fill the bags with 2-inches of sand (at least 2 cups) or use 3-inches of kitty litter (at least 3 cups). The sand or kitty litter helps keep the luminaries from blowing over and also for safety against unwanted fire.
- After that, you can twist the votive candle into middle of the sand that you have put inside the bags and also ensure it is secure.
- Then, put the bags at the location that you have decided to place and light it when night falls. You can use the long lighter to light up the candle or if you do not have long lighter, light up the candle before you put it inside the bags.
- Always remember to put off the lights when you are going to sleep and to protect the bags from snow or rain, you can wrap the bottom of the luminaries using a plastic bag or plastic wrap.
Hopefully you will have a good time in doing the above project during the upcoming Holidays with all those bright luminaries making it more enjoyable occasion.
Additional Reading:
http://ftp.doityourself.com/stry/make-holiday-luminaries
http://www.ehow.com/how_10671_make-holiday-luminaries.html
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ni2sml/2988652403/
