How To Use My Fairy Lights to Add Magic To Your Home Interiors

This is a first for me. Sharing a little bit more about my story and inspiration behind my products. My fairy lights are now the main focus of my business, but it is not the product I set out to make.

How My Hand Spun Fairy Lights Came To Be

I actually came to my fairy light designs through the craft of spinning. I love to experiment with traditional techniques and spent months learning to spin. I initially learnt to spin from my mum and by watching YouTube tutorials by Steph Goring. I love her chunky art yarns, and could happily spend all my time making hanks of giant yarn, but I’m a product designer at heart and needed to follow the technique through to a final product.

Image: My first spinning class with my mum in 1979

Spinning is all about combining materials together and I started to look around to what I could add into the yarns that I was creating.

With each of my designs I am trying to surprise. Normally fairy lights almost disappear when unlit because the wires are made as fine as possible. But I love to decorate the wires creating a product that exists as a valued item in itself, and then when it’s lit up there is that moment of ‘oh wow’ - like a cozy inside firework.

How do fairy lights transform a space and what mood can they create?

Since my fairy lights have become such a popular product I have experimented a lot with how to use and decorate with fairy lights. One of the best ways to introduce magic into home styling is to play with scale. I’ve always been inspired by Abigail Ahern in this sense, and I believe that the tiny size of the lights floating in space creates an enchanting feeling. Here are my favourite ways to use my fairy lights in your home interiors:

1. Confine Fairy Lights in a Vessel

While it is often tempting to drape fairy lights around the exterior of a frame or mirror, try to put lights confined within a vessel. I like to make a muddle of lights within a bell jar or simple glass vase.

I also like to place fairy lights mixed in amongst sea glass or shell collections to make exciting areas of a room to explore.

2. Add Fairy Lights for Outdoor Decoration Magic

I always take a set of lights for a picnic. If it starts getting a bit dark you can grab a stick and coil the lights around it making an impromptu twinkling stake to extend the evening. If you buy my battery powered fairy lights they are portable so they are perfect for a summer picnic or lazy evenings in the garden.

3. Fairy Lights and Plants Work Really Well

Decorate your house plants just as you would your Christmas tree. With so much more working from home now and the increased popularity of indoor plants you can create a tranquil vibe for your home office by adding my fairy lights to your house plants.

Image: Gold Leaf Fairy Lights draped around plant

4. Decorate Your Dining Table With Fairy Lights

MelaniePorter_Gold leaf wedding table.jpg — Image: Gold Leaf Fairy Lights in Decorative Vase for table decoration at wedding

Old fashioned cut glass reflects the lights in the most magical way and can make for a beautiful dining table centrepiece. Alternatively run a line of fairy lights along the length of your table to create a magical ambience for your dinner party guests. My gold leaf fairy lights are also the perfect decoration for wedding tables as they give that magical boho glow.

5. For More Inspiration Use Pinterest

Go on Pinterest there is so much visual inspiration for how you can use fairy lights around the home. I’m always amazed by how creative people can be. You can see my Pinterest boards here (link) and ‘Fairy Lights Aesthetic’ is always a good place to start!

If you have purchased my fairy lights and have used them in different or exciting ways in your home interiors or in your garden, I would love to see. Please do send me any photos of my products in use or tag me over on my instagram page @melanie_porter_design