DIY Christmas Lights Design

Christmas lights with a seasonal shape don’t have to cost a fortune. It’s possible to use string lights and garden trellis for a striking Christmas display.

Putting up Christmas lights in early December has always been a bit of a tradition in our family. When I was little I remember barely being able to contain my excitement when Dad would get out our set of Christmas lights! It was such torture to have to wait until dark to turn them on!

Some houses in our town would go all out with their Christmas lights.

So a few days before Christmas each year my family would all pile into the car just after dark and head off to look at the local Christmas lights. All the trees in the front yards would be flashing and twinkling, some with white lights others with coloured. Many houses had lights all over their roof as well; it was so wonderful to see.

We didn’t have lots of lights, but just having some on our house seemed to make it really feel like Christmas had arrived.

Our family tradition of putting up Christmas lights still continues but we are able to put up many more lights these days since the introduction of solar lights! We are so lucky in Australia that Christmas falls in the summer, because that allows us to use the energy from the sun to power our Christmas lights. We have quite a few sets of solar Christmas lights these days and it takes a few hours to put them all out around the garden.

This year when I was putting out my lights I discovered that I had pruned back one of the large shrubs that I would normally use to hang lights in. Oops!

It is right in the middle of our garden too. There was going to be quite a bare patch in our lights display if I couldn’t use that spot. So I decided to erect a temporary structure next to that shrub and hang the lights on that. Now I just had to work out how to do it!

I thought about using an old pallet as a frame but I decided that it would be too short; I wanted something about 2 meters tall. So I started looking around the garden and poking around in the sheds to see if I could find anything suitable.

I eventually spied a piece of old leftover garden trellis – it was a bit narrower than I had hoped but it was a great height! I decided that I would weave the lights through the trellis to make a Christmas pattern.

I planned out a simple pattern on the trellis that included a Christmas tree with a star on top. To prepare, I lay the trellis down and arranged the lights on top in my required shape. This allowed me to make sure that my set of string lights would be long enough.

I made a few marks on the trellis to help me remember where the lights needed to go and then I threaded the lights through the trellis.

To display it in the garden I drove two garden stakes into the ground and then attached it with wire so it could not move.

The result looks great. Most of our Christmas lights are randomly draped in trees and bushes so I love that this one is arranged in a specific Christmas shape.

I used the tree and star pattern because straight lines were easier. But if you are more artistic than me you could draw any festive pattern you like onto your trellis. You could then carefully use a staple gun to fix the lights in place according to your drawn image.

I might even give that a go next year!

I have never really grown out of seeing Christmas lights twinkling!

Do you put up lights around your home at Christmas time?