Christmas light balls are extremely popular outdoor Christmas decorations that are unique in appearance. Many times found in holiday light shows, botanical gardens, and other elegant displays, Christmas light balls are actually easy to make with just a few supplies.
How to Make Christmas Light Balls
First, gather your supplies. For this project, you’ll need chicken wire, small wire cutters, a measuring tape, gloves, and our LED mini lights.
Roll out the chicken wire and measure out the dimensions. To create a spherical shape, the chicken wire must be twice as long as it is wide. We are creating a 2′ Christmas light ball, so our chicken wire was 2′ x 4′.
Cut the chicken wire at the measured area. Because chicken wire can be sharp and hard to handle, gloves come in handy when manipulating the wiring.
Once the chicken wire is cut, place the two cut sides together and connect by twisting the wires around each other.
As you can see in this picture, we created a bond by twisting the wire.
Now you’ll have a cylinder of chicken wire. This is where the shaping process begin.
Begin pushing the cylinder’s sides together and twisting the wire together. Pleating as one would cloth, or folding the circle into each other, begins to create the round shape. Snip the wire with the wire cutters and twist it together to make sure it will hold.
Continue to sculpt the chicken wire to make it as round as possible. Pushing in the curves and pulling on the ends helps to create a more spherical shape.
Once the ball is completely spherical, it’s time to wrap with lights. Take your first string and wrap so that the male plug is exposed. This allows for the chicken wire ball to be plugged in and to power it.
Wrap the lights around the ball, in and out of the wire, to secure it. When one string has gone as far as it can go, plug the next string in to create end-to-end runs. For this 2′ ball, we used 3 LED light strings for added brightness, however a good rule of thumb is to use (1) 70ct 5mm LED Light string per every 1 ft of diameter. Once the lights are fully wrapped around the chicken wire ball, it’s ready to be plugged in.
The green Christmas light ball is 2′, while the blue Christmas light ball is 4′. Create more with other color LED lights in several different sizes to create an entire garden of Christmas light balls. Then just sit back and enjoy. These Christmas light balls are amazing when lit together. Just take a look!