Paper Christmas Lights Garland

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NOTE: This was originally posted on the Stubbornly Crafty blog on November 22, 2015. We’ve brought it back from the archives and republished it on the new SC blog. Enjoy!

Hi, friends! It’s cold, windy, and snowing outside. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas so we might as well get started on Christmas crafts, right? This kind of weather bums me out so I went with a brightly colored craft to share with you today. One that comes together quickly and doesn’t take a lot of supplies.

Let’s get started.

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Supply List:

  • Gray cardstock

  • Colored cardstock in colors of choice

  • Glue gun or paper glue

  • Hole punch

  • Scoring blade or other scoring tool

  • Twine, ribbon, or yarn

Cutting Your Cardstock:

  • Cut out your gray cardstock in 1 1/4″ x 4″ strips

  • Cut out your colored cardstock in 1″ x 8.5″ strips

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Putting Your Lights Together:

Take your gray cardstock and score it every 1/2″. Make two marks a half inch down at 1 1/4″ and 2 3/4″. Fold your paper on the score lines and use a paper punch to punch two holes where we added pen marks.

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Take the two ends, overlap one 1/2″ flap onto the other end’s last 1/2″ flap and glue.

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Now onto shaping the bulbs. My eight year old came home from school and I recruited her to help. Ignore her out-of-lunch-money stamps. 

Take your strip of 1″ x 8.5″ cardstock and fold in half lightly pressing at the crease. 

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Pinch your two ends together and push the paper onto your palm. When you bring it back up it should resemble a Christmas light. If not try it again until you get the shape you like.

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While still pinching your ends together use your hole puncher to punch a hole through both layers about a 1/4″ down. Make sure it’s centered.

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Now let’s start stringing our lights together. Stick it through one hole of your gray light top and then insert your bulb in the center and string your twine through both holes of your bulb. You can push your bulb paper up high to make it easier.


String it through the other side of your gray cardstock. Repeat for as many lights as you need to get the garland length you’d like. Make sure to keep the side you glued in the back on all the bulbs while stringing them together.

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And that’s it. Now display them somewhere fabulous and admire your quick and easy Christmas lights garland. I think they turned out pretty darn adorable. I hope you do too.

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Yep, fun Christmas crafts like this help me find the snow a little more tolerable. I’m just a big baby when it comes to being cold. Thanks for crafting along today!

Lisa Summerhays