I strongly feel that re-purposing things goes hand-in-hand with solar power. Nothing like cost-effectively making something you love, while keeping things out of the landfill, that will continue to charge and give you great light for a long time to come! Take a peak back at my website for new projects and articles like the best solar lights for pathways.

Win-Win!

Step 1: Gather Supplies

Gather the supplies(I purchased them from my local thrift store)

Plain wire

Metal spray paint

2 hanging baskets

Curtain rod

Washers

Purchased my light from amazon.

Step 2: Prepping

Remove the chain from the hanging baskets and paint the baskets and rod the desired color. Many different colors would look good besides black. Gold, Silver, Brass, White…all of these would also look very good. It mostly depends on any reoccurring themes or colors you have in your garden already. Let’s say you have some white rocks surrounding your garden bed. You can either contrast or complement your white rocks, you could do a white garden light(that would be complement) or you could do a black garden light(that would be contrast).

Step 3: Dry Fit

Dry fit your pieces together. Make sure that everything will snuggly fit together. Obviously it’s tags along with the saying “measure twice, cut once”. This will give you an idea of size and final shape.

Step 4: Wire Your Baskets

Wire your baskets together. Pretty Straightforward. Nice and tight is best. Remember this is an outdoor light so it will take some slight punishment from the outdoor elements.

Step 5: Mount Washers and Shower Rod

Wire together your washers & rod to the center of one of the baskets(or it you have access to a welder, weld the pieces together for clean lines). Same as above, the tighter the better. I would recommend taking these lights indoors if you know storms with heavy winds are coming. They also may need to be tightened every so often, maybe around once a season.

Step 6: Decide on Height

Push end of rod into desired place. This will decide the final height. Ensure you have found a ‘home’ for this light in the garden and to make the height appropriate for its location.

Step 7: Dry Fit Solar Lights

Measure the solar powered garden lights vs the baskets. Measure the length of one spine and multiply that by how many spines you have. Use this total length of spines measurement to ensure you space your solar garden lights out accordingly.

Step 8: Wire Solar Lights

Wire-tie the lights along each spline to get even lighting. You can have the lights densely or spaced out, that’s fine. The important part is that it is all even.