Last week I showed you some of the flowers I made as a token for all my coworkers.
However, I must admit that not all coworkers are created equal. There are a few people there I consider friends, and for them, I made something else to go along with their flower.
If you are interested at all in how I made them, and don’t mind an image-heavy post, check below the fold.
Like so many things here at Casa Aztec, it all starts with trash that should be recyclable but that, in the hellscape that is my address, is not actually recycled: a glass jar (pickled pepperoncinis for the win), and a disposable plastic water bottle.
Some dollar store twine, a couple of glues, and some LED fairly light strings, and we are set to start.
You may be wondering what the role of the plastic bottle is in this setup. Fair question! It goes like this: I want the lamp to be also useful as a holder of things–pens, rulers, paper flowers, cat toys. But if you plunk the string of fairy lights in the jar, then you can’t really use it for anything else: it’s a mess in there!
So I thought that I could use the body of the plastic bottle as a frame to wind the fairy lights around, and keep them from tangling with anything one puts inside the vase.
And it worked!
One of the things I like most about these lights is that they give enough ambient light to be cozy; a bonus is that they last quite a bit (the box says “up to 64 hours”, but honestly, a fresh battery, lasts up to 72 hours).
I used some thin chipboard, saved from packaging, to affix the battery box/switch combo inside the jar’s mouth, near the very edge of the glass. This serves the dual purpose of stabilizing the plastic insert, and keeping the switch within easy reach when using the vase as a light source.
Some more twine to cover the thread around the jar’s opening, and voilà! A lamp:
And so, with very little expense, I made these for my friends:
If you are observant, you may have noticed that the four lamps in the image above are all slightly different, but that the two lamps in the second image at the top of this post are identical. That’s because I actually made five of these, and originally had intended to make them all the same, but got bored by the sameness after the second one.
Behold, the original design: a classic, elegant yet simple.
The first variation: an exercise in modesty.
The natural progression: a more open, airy style.
Followed by an almost minimalist design…
…with a twist.
There was absolutely no way I wasn’t going to try to make something resembling one of those old-fashioned oil lamps with the wire handle. No way.
And since I had the wire (remember when Chinese food boxes had the wire handles? yeah, that’s what this is), here we are.
If you made it this far, thank you! “And to all a good night.”
Oh, you are curious about the other flowers? Never fear, you’ll see more of those soon.
Her Hands, My Hands 
That’s genius about the plastic bottle and lights! You should be so proud of the finished product, that yellow flower with the red/pink out of it made me gasp a little.
I’m a minimalist who likes her clean surfaces, but this is still making me think about buying/consuming and how much I throw away.
I started saving recyclables a few years ago, because a coworker set up bins at the office that he would take home and put in his own bins (my city hasn’t done that for a long while), and in short order I was amazed and awed (in the original “that’s terrifying” way), at how much ‘trash’ one person can produce. So much packaging!
and, thank you!
I’d been mulling how to add light to the vases while leaving usable space inside, for a while, and one day it just hit me, and then I wondered how I hadn’t seen it all along.
They’re beautiful!!
Thank you!