Goin' Down the Bayou

I've been sort of "off" in my crafty-osity lately. Like, a lot.

For example:

Somehow, in my head, painting the firescreen with high temperature paint in an amazing color was far awesomer than in reality.

But, wait! There's more! Before I decided to go blue, I went orange!

Did you think it couldn't be worse than the blue? My new theory is that the screen needs to be either dark or light, but no medium tones. Like maybe a navy would be better? Maybe.

So that happened and I still haven't painted it back to black again. And it knocked me on my creative keister.

Yesterday, I had another idea that may or may not be awesome. But it was cheap. So I went for it.

At the thrift store I saw a bunch of cheap-o vases in lots of colors. Together they looked pretty cool. See:

They were all less than $2 each. They reminded me of something I had just seen at Disneyland. In the French Quarter section, hanging off the balcony was a series of colorful bottles with twinkle lights tucked inside. I made a mental note to keep my eyes peeled for things I could use to eventually create that in my backyard.

And then, there I was, at the thrift store lookin' right at them. Except that instead of twinkle lights, I decided upon the solar landscaping lights.

A year or so ago I made one of those ubiquitous ball jar sun lamp things. And it worked just fine. Except that my kids opened it and rain got in and I eventually threw it away. But I knew the process.

This is a little different. You need:
Colorful Vases (or you could use that mod podge method of coloring your own)

Clear silicone

Solar landscape lights

I took the lamp part off the body and placed it on the top of the vase. Most of them rested just inside the vase and one was a little too small. I could've bought a bigger lamp, as they come in a few different sizes. But I just put a ring of clear silicone around the narrowest spot, waited for it to dry and used that as a ledge to hold the lamp in place. Then I siliconed around the fixture to both hold it in place and to keep water out of the vase.

Here they are in daytime in my yard:

And

The pink one on the far left is a little weird in daytime, but at night, you can't see the solar deal so it all works out.

Here is the best pic I could get of my yard at night:

The green and blue lights are the brightest. But they all look really pretty and colorful.

I think I need more, lots more.

Edited to add: The day after I put them out, it rained! Whatevs, southern California! I noticed that the solar panel on my particular lamps tends to let water into the containers. So maybe a small bead of silicone around where the solar panel fits into the metal housing? I'm gonna fix it right after morning drop-off today!