Christmas DIY Lighted Copper Joy Sign

 

Eek, we are getting so close to Christmas.  Anyone else panicking slightly?  I somehow always feel like I will never get everything done in time.  Not that it’s that big of a deal if I don’t, but I do like to have my house fully decorated.  Right now there are just odd bits decorated here and there.  What can I say? I was never one for being organized.

 

 

At least my bar cart is looking festive.  Which brings us to the Christmas DIY we are showing you today! An easy 1 hour DIY that anyone can do. You only need two things to pull it together: copper tubing and battery operated lights.  The copper tubing was picked up from Canadian tire, but any hardware store will do.  We got the copper lights from Amazon, because they come in lengths longer than I could find elsewhere.  Bonus: they were also much cheaper than other places!  This entire project only cost around $25-30.

 

This is by far one of the easiest DIY’s you can try.  I expected it to be much harder than it was.  The worst part was wrapping the lights around the tubing.  The actual bending of the copper took a measly 20 minutes, the wire wrapping took around 40 minutes.  But I kind of mastered it near the end, so I’m here to tell you how to do it faster than I did!

 

Supplies:

-One 1/4″ 10′ General Purpose Copper Tubing

-One 20′ mini copper fairy lights (battery operated)

 

 

Method:

Step one:  Gather your supplies.  I thought I’d need clamps to hold it in place, but the wire bends so easily all you need is your hands and body!

 

Step two:  Straighten the tubing, trying to avoid any kinks.  It comes all wound up tight.  Use your thumbs to bend any small curves out.  Imagine giving two thumbs up, then turning your thumbs inwards to face each other.  The tubing should be between your 4 fingers on each hand and your thumbs bending the tubing away from your body.  You can skip this step if you want, but I feel unwrapping it first made it easier to bend afterwards.

 

Step three:  Move to a area with a lot of space and few breakables. Since you unwound the tubing it will be a long straight tube. As you twist it for your sign, the tubing may swing around a little bit.  Just be cautious.

 

Step Four:  Tape a few pieces of paper together, and using a marker, write out how you want your cursive writing to look.  I just picked one off google that I liked.

 

Step Five:  Choose your starting point where you would naturally have started writing the word on paper.  Follow the lines on your paper, twisting the tubing and being careful to not put so much pressure as to pinch the metal tubing together.  This will happen in the small portion of the “J” if you follow my shape, as well as at the top of the “Y”.  Otherwise you do not want this to happen.  You can bend around objects if you wish, to make it easier.  Also, you may need to use your feet or knees to hold the tubing still as you twist certain points.  For the “O” I placed my foot on the “J” as I brought it down under and then over the circle to create the loop that passes through the “O”. Once finished, adjust the tubing any way you like, I fixed up my “Y” afterwards.

 

 

 

Step Six:  To wrap the lights around the tubing, first wind the lights around the battery pack.  This will make moving it in the loops much easier.  Start wrapping the lights where you started making your shape, for me that was the first loop in the “J”.  You may have to slightly pull your shape apart to allow the pack to pass through.  Just close them back up afterwards.  I wound mine too tight the first time and had to unravel afterwards and do it again.  Trust me, you do not want to do this.  Space the loops of wire 1/2-3/4″ apart, this should give you just the right amount to make it till the end.

 

 

We hung some stockings underneath the sign to hold our battery pack.  You could also lay it on a window sill and just tuck behind another decoration or some greenery.  See below for how it looks lit up at night! Hope you enjoyed this Christmas DIY tutorial:)