The second craft I presented on BT was this little up-cycled light bulb - I turned a dead bulb into a little vase. This was a surprisingly ambitious project - for some reason, in my mind, I thought I would just unscrew the cap of the fuggin bulb and voila. 

Lucky for me, The Cpt left on a 7am flight on Sunday so I was up bright and early and tackled this project before 9am. It was a miracle I didn’t throw it against a wall, at least a few times, but as time went on, it did get easier. Once you get past the fear that you’re going to break the light bulb, it goes smoother.

Tools:

1. Light bulb
2. Needle nose plyers and the tiniest screw driver you own
3. Ribbon
4. Glue
5. Twine
6. Paper of your choosing
7. Lavender (optional)

Step 1:  Gutting the light bulb. I followed the instructions found here but on this blog, they not only speak nerd but they speak man too. This is no place for that type of language so here is my abbreviated version. 

• Pinch this soddered bit with the needle nose players and once you have the lips curled a little, pull it off like a scab. EW. 

• The next  part was the hardest. So this black cap type thing is on there pretty good - I tried to ply it off, pinch it off, twist it off, a million things. There is a little bitty hole in the middle, which is what the soddered bit was protecting so finally, I took a screwdriver for eye glasses and poked it through the little tiny hole in the middle. Then I wedge/popped one half off ( the black thing is really two halves together) from the inside. That took about 20 minutes to figure out how to do it so I don’t want any sass as to how obvious that is. 

• So the black thing is off - and now there is this little rim of glass on the inside. By this time, I was feeling brave and getting a little bit fed up but there was no turning back. So I just cracked and broke it until it was big enough to grip the filament with the plyers and yank it out. Like a tooth. This post is hostile. 

Step 2: Decorate that bad boy! I chose to use ribbon - a thicker cream coloured and a warm orange. I used liquid glue and it attached no problem. 

Step 3: Fill up that little bulb (which I am now incredibly protective of) with whatever you like - little pebbles, lavender, dirt - whatever fits in the little hole! A funnel would have been handy at this point, so I rolled up a piece of paper and filled it up with lavender. I think there are lots of options - you could make this a little terrarium, a candle (use candle oil and put a long wick in there) - the bulb are incredible heat resistant so don’t be afraid to do something hot!

Step 4: Take the paper of your choice (I ripped a piece from an old novel I keep around specifically for these times), folded it in half and cut a little heart. And then I attached that using glue too.

Step 5: Wrap some twine around the top of screw of the bulb, and leave a tail so you can tie a loop. Viola! Stick a flower, tall grass, or nothing at all in there. It’s kinda cute, non? In this shot and in the segment, it was hanging off a banana hanger, but you could hang it off a hook on the fridge or even in the bathroom - the moisture might me the fragrance more potent?