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Happy 4th of July to you!

Here’s a fast and easy 4th of July craft project.  It literally took me minutes to make these cute 4th of July luminaries.  They are great if you are having a party or BBQ and want some fun and easy decorations.  They are so easy that they make a great kids craft, too.  In fact, it’s something the kids could do during the day on the 4th of July for a craft project to keep them busy and entertained.  Then  they can help you add candles (or LED lights) to light up the luminaries when it gets dark.  But the luminaries are still  fun and festive decorations during the daytime too!

If you’re a scrapbooker, rubber stamper or paper crafter, you probably already have everything you need already.

Here’s what I did:

1. Cut the top of the paper bag with decorative scissors.

2. Punch the top of the bag with a decorative punch (see picture).  Make sure the bag is unfolded when you do this…otherwise you might punch both the front and sides of the bag at the same time. (Yes, I’m speaking from experience.  That’s exactly what I did on my first bag.)

3. Using ink or paint, rubber stamp the bag with red, white and blue stars.  It was easy to lay the bag flat to stamp the front and back of the luminary.  To easily rubber stamp the sides of the luminary, I simply placed the top of one of my ink pad containers inside the bag and held it there while I stamped the side of the bag.

That’s it…you’re done in 3 easy steps.  You don’t even need to do the first two steps for these luminaries to turn out wonderfully.

Here’s a tip: place citronella candles inside the bag instead of regular candles to help ward off bugs at night.

Happy Crafting!

AJ

PS - If you don’t need luminaries, this bag would make a great gift bag – especially if you are bringing something like cookies to a BBQ, or some other food that you could put in a bag.  Just a thought.

Tags: 4th of July, Candles, decorative, gift bag, handmade, homemade, independence day, led, lights, luminaries, paper bag, Paper Crafts, punch, rubber stamps, scissors, Scrapbooking

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 9:43 pm and is filed under 4th of July, Holidays, Kids Crafts, Paper Crafts, Rubber Stamping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.