Materials:
- LED Balloon Lights
- Ornament Hooks or Paper Clips
- Fishing Line (Monofilament)
- Black Tape or Sharpie
This project cost us $65. If you hire somebody it could cost you around $300 dollars. Scale to the size of area you want to cover.
“I am making firefly lights to add romance to the lighting scheme for the reception. Many people don’t know that fireflies have a romantic story! They have only one purpose in life…to find a mate! Sometimes they don’t even eat! The male firefly will blink in order to attract the female, and she will blink back to signal that she is interested. How romantic!” - Shirley
Directions:
- LED balloon lights can be bought online in bulk for as little as 5 cents each. You can also get them from party stores.
- For this project, we used about 100 green balloon lights, but they also come in other colors. You can buy them blinking or have them be steady. We did a combo of both.
- Thread the monofilament through the hole on the actual light
- Tie off fishing line and cut the line.
- Cut the strings at different lengths. Some can be 3 feet, 2 feet, 1 foot, etc. That way you create a more natural looking pattern.
- To really make them as invisible as possible, you want to use black tape, such as electrical tape, or even a black marker to cover the silver case around the light. This will help them blend into the background at night even better.
- Then you hook the Christmas ornaments or paper clips to the other side of the string and hang in groupings. If you want to hang the lights in an open space simply string your monofilament between trees or walls and hang the individual strands from that string.
- LED Balloon Lights are all battery operated and work individually. Even if one goes out, the others will remain lit and beautiful! It’s not like a strand of Christmas lights where when one goes out they all go out.
- On average, 12 to 48 hours! You should ideally hang them the night before or the morning before your event, because it’s a lot easier to turn them on before you hang them!
- You can add a fan to make the fireflies have a more dramatic look. You will have to plug a fan in to an outside source, so you’ll want to use caution…but it definitely creates a fun look!
Check out Shirley Bovshow’s Garden Designing Expertise at EdenMakers.com, and follow her on Twitter @EdenMaker.
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