How to Make Lighted Christmas Balls

Ironically…and much to our girls’ chagrin, we have never done much more than hang a few stands of white lights outside to decorate for Christmas. Our deck-the-hall efforts have always focused on the inside of our home. But this year it’s going to be different. Not that our house will rival the Griswold’s from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation…but we hope that with the addition of several lighted Christmas balls we’ll at least appear to be less like Ebenezer Scrooge and more like George Bailey.

Fortunately, making lighted Christmas balls isn’t difficult. And once you’ve wrastled the chicken wire into submission, it’s actually very easy…especially if you have the right tools.

[Update: If you’re looking for an alternative to using chicken wire, check out this post…I found it much easier.]

What You Need to Make Lighted Christmas Balls

• • The Lighted Christmas Balls Themselves: (click on links to buy online)
    • Chicken wire or poultry netting from a 2′ roll *
    • 2 (or more) strands of outdoor mini-lights per lighted Christmas ball (100 count)
    • 1 extension cord per lighted Christmas ball
    • A clothes line (or other type of rope) to hang each lighted Christmas ball

* NOTE: We used typical chicken wire that has 1″ holes…because that’s what we had lying around. However, you could use poultry netting that has 2″ holes instead – it still provides the structure that your lights will need to be wrapped around, but not require as much cutting or man-handling.

• • Tools: (click on links to buy online)
    • Measuring tape
    • Gloves
    • Wire cutters
    • Other – We used 2 methods to cut our chicken wire…the first proving to be easiest:
      • Method 1: 2 saw horses, plywood, 4 pony clamps
      • Method 2: 6 screwdrivers…with your surface being the ground

Instructions on How to Make Lighted Christmas Balls

Making lighted Christmas balls only involves 4 steps: 1. Cutting the wire into an appropriately sized rectangle; 2. creating a wire tube; 3. creating a wire sphere; and 4. wrapping lights around the wire sphere

These steps are quite intuitive…but to make them easier for you, I’ve provided you with some additional tips that we learned along the way. But if you’re not one for details…skip all the way to the bottom and you can download a printable 1-pager set of instructions.

1. Cut your wire into an appropriately sized rectangle: 

• • Size chicken wire (i.e., roll height): 
    • We learned the hard way…if you don’t start out with the right size chicken wire, you’ll either have to tuck a ton of excess wire into the interior of your balls…or have to settle with oblong lighted Christmas blobs…neither of which seem say “Merry Christmas!”
    • That said, use a 2′ tall roll of chicken wire to get the typical size lighted Christmas ball…with a 14.5″ diameter.
    • To get larger lighted Christmas balls, start with the 3′ or 4′ tall rolls of chicken wire.
  • Cutting the wire for your lighted Christmas ball:
    • Make sure to put your gloves on right away…otherwise you’ll quickly be nursing paper-cut like wounds!
    • Flatten out your chicken wire. This is made a lot easier if you use one of the following methods:
      • • Method 1: We found that the easiest way to flatten out your chicken wire is to stretch it over plywood and keep it in place with a pony clamp at each corner. To make it even easier, raise the plywood to waist level by placing it on top of 2 saw horses.
        • Method 2: However, if you don’t have all of these things handy…you can simply roll your chicken wire out on the ground and then poke a screwdriver into the ground at each corner of your wire rectangle. Then poke 2 more screwdrivers into the ground just on the other side of where you’ll be cutting. That way…as you cut, the chicken wire will stay in place and not spring up and slice your face!

• • • After you’ve done that, all you have to do is make your measurement at 46″ (when using 2′ roll of chicken wire…you’ll need to go longer if you’re using 3′ or 4′ rolls of chicken wire).
    • Cut the wire with your wire cutters.
    • If you’re making more than 1 lighted Christmas ball, I’d recommend that you cut as many wire rectangles as you need…and just put them to the side until you start your next step.

2. Create a wire tube:

• • With your gloves still on, fold the 2 cut ends together…lining up the edges…forming a wire tube.
  • Using the loose wire ends, twist them together.
  • You don’t need to twist the wire together about 6-8″ from either end, since you’ll be folding the ends of your wire tube together to make the wire sphere.

3. Create a wire sphere:

• • At this point you have to put your perfectionist tendencies aside…as you will not be making a perfectly round ball, but rather something fairly close to being round.
  • Kind of like you’re wrapping a present, create several dovetails from the open ends of your tube and fold them together.
  • If you’d like and you have them handy, use twist ties to hold the dovetails together. I didn’t because I found that the chicken wire stayed fairly well in place.
  • From there you simply mash in the squared edges you’ve created on the ends a bit to make your sphere a bit rounder. Again, it won’t be perfectly round…but once the lights are wrapped around it, it will take even better shape.

4. Wrap lights around the wire spheres:

• • Starting with the male end of one of your strands of lights, poke it in and then back out of your chicken wire and tie a knot…so that the wire will stay in place (this is where using poultry netting with 2″ holes makes things a bit easier). I try to start (and stop) each strand of lights where I think the lighted Christmas ball would be best hung…makes things a bit neater and easier to hang.
  • Now simply wrap the lights around the wire sphere…slightly rotating your sphere as you go, so that you get complete coverage with your lights. Note…you are not putting the lights in the sphere, but simply wrapping them around it.

• • Once you reach the end of your 1st strand of lights, thread it in/out of the chicken wire and tie a knot to keep it secure. Again, I try to begin and end my strand of lights close to the same spot so that the clump of plugs are all generally in the same place.
  • If you’re using chicken wire that comes in 2′ rolls, you’ll need to add at least 1 more strand of lights. For the larger lighted Christmas light balls, I’d add 1 or 2 more strands of lights.
  • Like with the first strand of lights, thread each end in/out of the chicken wire and tie a knot to keep it secure.
  • I also try to make each connection inside the sphere so that it is camouflaged by the lights.

Congratulations! You’ve done it…you’ve created a lighted Christmas ball. If you’re making more…rinse and repeat.

Instructions on How to Hang Lighted Christmas Balls

How you hang your lighted Christmas balls depends on where you’re hanging them. Regardless…for safety reasons and to minimize things getting unplugged, make sure to use the clothes line to hang your lighted Christmas balls…keeping the tension on the clothes line rather than on the extension cord.

Here are a few methods you could try to get your lighted Christmas balls up and off the ground:

• • Low limbs:
    • Ladder: We hung our lighted Christmas balls on the limbs of a Japanese Maple that I could reach with a ladder. Still a bit cumbersome, but easier than the other methods.
    • Cowboy it up: If you can’t reach the limbs with a ladder, but they’re still low enough…with the clothes line already tied to the lighted Christmas ball and the extension cord connected (also tied in a knot), simply swing it around as best you can and release it on the upswing.
    • For both of these methods you’ll then simply secure your clothes line by tying it off on a limb and then wrap your extension cord around the limb a few times to take out the slack.
  • Higher limbs:
    • Get the rope up and over: There are several ways you could get your rope up and over higher limbs.
      • • Tie the clothes line around a small water bottle or bean bag and throw or swing it up and over the limb.
        • I’ve also seen a potato gun used quite effectively.
    • Connect and raise your lighted Christmas ball:
      • • Once the rope is around your limb, lower it to the ground…remove the water bottle or bean bag and tie it to the lighted Christmas ball. As I mentioned before, I try to tie the rope where I’ve concentrated all the other connections.
        • Then feed the extension cord in/out of the chicken wire and tie a knot as you’ve done before…and plug it into the strand of lights.
        • Using the clothes line (i.e., NOT the extension cord), pull the lighted Christmas ball into place.
        • Secure the rope by tying it on a limb or nearby bush and gently maneuver any slack out of the extension cord.

Voila…you’re done! Once nighttime falls, all you have to do is plug in your extension cord and enjoy the added Christmas glow your lighted Christmas balls provide to your outdoor spaces.

We’ve already made 5 lighted Christmas balls and will probably make several more. And we may even spread the Christmas love a bit more by hosting a lighted Christmas ball making get-together. Regardless, I hope this post helps you make some of your own…and if you do, please send me some pics…we’d love to share them.

Oh…and for an abbreviated 1-pager printable of these instructions, click here or on the image to the right.

Take care all,

 

 

 

PS: And don’t feel like you have to always hang them from your trees. This year (2020) we simply placed them on the ground! Easy-peasy!