The holidays make for more parties, which bring us more drinks, which means extra plastic cups everywhere! What do you do when you have so many Solo cups? Make a big, beautiful spherical light, I say! This contemporary light is simply made from cups, a string of colourful Christmas lights, a drill, and a stapler. Make sure you rinse and dry your cups if you're upcycling, or else your light will be radiating leftover beer. Wait, you might like that.

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

You will need:

30 or more Solo cups (I used large ones)
drill with 11/32" drill bit
stringed Christmas lights
stapler

*The size of the drill bit may need to be bigger or smaller depending on the size of your Christmas light bulbs. I used a standard set of lights and this was the perfect drill bit size for me.

Step 2: Drill Away

Drill a hole in the center of the bottom of a cup.

Poke a Christmas light through the bottom to make sure it's a good fit. You want it to poke through without it being too loose so they don't slip off. Continue drilling holes in the rest of the cups.

Step 3: Staple It

Staple 2 cups side by side, making sure one of the cup's lip is just over the other cup's.

Now staple another one next to the other, staggering the cup lips again. They should eventually stagger over, under, over, under, et cetera.

Step 4: Staple More

You can make this as big as you like, but since I used massive cups, my lower level was just a crescent made of 8 cups. Start stapling on another level on top of, remembering to stagger the lips.

Go all the way across, stapling the cups to the ones below and the ones to their sides.

Keep going up and across until it starts turning into a ball. You'll start using less cups the higher you get.

Step 5: Add the Lights

When you're happy with your spherical shape, turn it over and begin poking the Christmas light bulbs through the holes. They will stay firmly in place.

It will look better if you don't put the same colour bulbs in side-by-side.