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Luminaries can be a wonderfully inexpensive way to complete your outdoor decorating for a variety of holidays. While traditionally known as a Christmas decoration, they can be used for any holiday.
While luminaries are generally thought of as a candle placed inside of a paper bag, then set along walks or driveways to illuminate the path of your holiday guests, there are many other ways to make luminaries.
To make a basic luminary all you will need is a brown paper lunch size bag. Simply fill the bottom of the bag with sand or kitty litter, place a votive candle in the bag and light. You can line your sidewalks or driveway with these. You can also make a punched hole design on your bag for fancier luminaries. With a paper punch or other punch tool, make snowflakes or stars on the two larger sides of your paper bag. These bags can also be purchased in a variety of colors, such as red and green for Christmas, or black and orange for Halloween. A word of caution though, these bags should not be left unattended. If you live in an area that is windy and dry, these bags do have the possibility of catching fire. If this happens to be the case, I am going to give you some ideas on other luminaries to use.
Again for these luminaries you will be using candles, but you will also be recycling some tin cans. Save any soup, vegetable or coffee cans that you would normally discard. Wash them and remove the labels, then spray paint them using any color paint that you choose. For Halloween, try orange or black, for Christmas red, green or gold. You will now want to poke some holes in your cans. While you can use a hammer and a large nail, I have found that a drill with about a 1/4 inch drill bit works the best. For some reason, a hammer and nail will have a tendency to flatten your can out slightly, while the drill does not seem to do that. Punch or drill some random holes in the can, or you can again use a pattern such as a snowflake, star or even a scary face.
You may want to add a bit of weight to the bottom of your can, again such as kitty litter or sand. Insert the candle and place your luminaries where ever you require a bit of light. While you are still using a candle, these will be a bit safer for those people living in a dry area.
It is also possible to use glass jars for a luminary of this type. Be creative, you can also hang these from tree branches or porch railings by adding a bit of wire shaped into a hanger to the top of your can or jar.
I have also seen a type of wrought iron hanger, that is placed into the ground, and has a hook on the opposite end. From this hook is hanging a holder in which you can place a jar. This is another idea to get your luminaries off the ground, if you do not happen to have any trees near where you will be needing a little light. I would check gardening centers or holiday decorating centers for these hangers.
You can also make luminaries out of recycled two liter soda bottles. Since these will not be including a candle, but a string of Christmas lights, these will probably be the safest of all of the luminaries that you could use. For these luminaries you will need the empty clear soda bottles (it will take two bottles to make one luminary), some holiday print paper napkins, spray paint to match the napkins, reverse collage glue, chenille stems and a set of indoor/outdoor white miniature Christmas lights.
The first thing you will need to do after preparing your bottles is to cut 5 ½ inches up from the bottom of the first soda bottle. From the second bottle cut 2 3/4 inches up from the bottom. You can discard the rest of the bottles, keeping just the bottoms.
Now take your napkin, and separate it if two-ply, you will only need the printed part. Cut a 7 x 14 inch piece of the printed napkin. Working with one section at a time, coat the inside of the large section of bottle with the collage glue. Press the printed side of the napkin onto the glue, you will need to smooth this carefully to remove any wrinkles. Continue covering the inside of the bottle with the glue and napkins until the entire surface is coated. Allow this to dry.
Take the smaller bottom bottle part and spray paint with your coordinating paint. After this is dry you will need to make a slot/hole for your lights to run through. Punch a hole about halfway down the bottom. Repeat this on the opposite side, now using a pair of old scissors, cut a slit from the top edge down to the hole.
It is now time to add your lights. Cluster a group of five, or so lights together, and tie with your chenille stem (you can also use garbage bag ties for this). Place the light cluster in the base and run each end of the light cord through the holes/slots. You will need to fill some sandwich bags with a bit of sand or kitty litter and place in the bottom also. Place the filled sandwich bag around the lights to help hold them in place. Lastly put the napkin covered dome down over the top of the base. Continue these steps, leaving one light bulb uncovered between each luminary. Again just string these together and place in any area that you would like a little extra light for the holidays.
I hope this has given you several ideas to use for making luminaries for your holiday decorating, and will well light the paths of any holiday visitors that you may have.
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