How to make a Christmas Silhouette from a box

I tweeted @CocaCola_GB this week with pride in my latest creation: a Christmas Silhouette I had made from a Diet Coke box. They made the appropriate noises, and pointed me to the BritMums #FestivePlaylist which reminds everyone of the  Designated Driver programme they have every winter, which helps promote the positive role that soft drinks can play as credible alternatives to alcohol. You can use their interactive Pub Finder to find places where Designated Drivers can enjoy 2-for-1 Coke and Diet Coke when out with friends – find out more here!

To make the silhouette, you will need a box (cereal box will work too), some card, tracing paper, and a set of battery-operated lights.

Firstly, cut a large hole from one side of your box, which will ‘display’ your silhouette. You will need a second hole on another side to allow you to reach in and switch the lights on and off but, dependent on the shape of the box you have, this could just be the already-opened end.

Next, you need to cut out your silhouette from the card. In this case I made a rather ambitious choice of Santa and his sleigh flying over a skyline. I cut out various windows form the buildings to let the light through. Santa and his sleigh were very fiddly, and needed use of a craft knife and patience. I never thought how tricky it is to a) draw and b) cut from card the silhouette of eight reindeer.

Once this is done, stick firmly to the tracing paper (I stuck it to the non-shiny side.) Then trim your tracing paper so that it is about 1cm larger than the aperture you have cut for it on all sides. Stick to the inside of the box with the card silhouette on the inside (and invisible from the outside.)

Leave to dry, then insert battery lights and check that you got it right! Finally, decorate the outside of your box with wrapping paper for a festive look. Remember to leave an opening so that you can access the lights.

The added bonus of me using the Diet Coke box, which is wider than a cereal box, and putting an access cavity on the top of the box is that, when sitting in the window exposed to natural light, the silhouette will still be activated by daylight!

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Now on to my super Festive #FestivePlaylist.

1. It’s not Christmas in my house until I have heard Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea. Growing up overseas, and coming home from boarding school, this song speaks of my life and making the journey back to my parents from wherever I was in the world. I still remember watching a festive episode of Casualty when I was in Fourth Form where they played this song as one of the characters was driving home to surprise her parents and met with a sticky end in a pile-up on the road caused by drink driving.

2. My sister-in-law is the World’s biggest Mariah Carey fan. I am not, yet I can’t help getting excited when I hear All I Want For Christmas Is You. Its on the sound track to Love Actually which has this amazing airport footage of people arriving to the arms of their family which never fails to make me cry. And once again links back to the ‘going home for Christmas’ thing that has been such a big part of my life for so long.

3. I spent a year in France, not to mention many summers, during my degree,  with a very special family. This particular Christmas I spent hours decorating the breakfast room of their B&B and house, all the while with the Three Tenors at Christmas playing in the background. When I moved in with DH I bought a copy of the CD for our first Christmas together. It’s always the CD I listen to when I decorate the tree. Oh Holy Night is the kind of song that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

4. This year I have been utterly spellbound by the track that accompanies the John Lewis Christmas Advert. It’s not actually a Christmas track at all and yet when I hear it, I feel festive: I picture snow,  a Snowman, love, peace and goodwill. You get the idea.

5. Did you see Michael Buble on TV the other day? I adore his voice. In fact he is literally the sound-track to my life since I met Stevie. We did our first dance to his version of Save the Last Dance, and one of his songs was riding high in the charts when each of my girls were born: the nurses played the radio through the night in the delivery suite so I heard each song many times whilst in labour. Last winter I played his Christmas CD in the car so much that a) it stopped working and b) LBG used to know all the words to Holly Jolly Christmas and sing it in the perfect accent.

6. I used to sing in the school choir in our amazing chapel, and there was no bigger event than Nine Lessons and Carols. Some of the choristers had incredible voices: Sarah Fox, for example. Her father David used to sing Three Kings solo every year. I wish I had a recording. It was indescribably beautiful.

This is an entry for the #FestivePlaylist, sponsored by Coca-Cola.