DIY Beautiful Snowflakes Out Of Cheap Hangers For Unique Winter Home Decor

Take a moment to see an everyday item in a new light. Plastic clothes hangers are common enough, but each one is a complex form made up of an assortment of thick and thin tubes that are both rounded and angular, large and small. There's a creative Christmas decoration you can make with these household items–join together a team of them, and plastic clothes hangers are transformed into an intricate, oversized snowflake.

On their YouTube channel, a crafter from Hometalk shared how to connect white plastic clothes hangers to form a filigree snowflake. Looped with golden-hued fairy lights and spied from a distance, few observers would guess its mundane origins.

For this project, you'll need at least 16 white plastic hangers, clear zip ties, hot glue, and a string of lightweight battery-operated LED lights. If you plan to display your snowflake outside, make sure your lights are suitable for outdoor use. You can also use up that stack of wire hangers you can't get rid of by subbing them in for brand-new plastic hangers. (Here's why you should stop using wire hangers for clothes immediately.) If you go this route, you might also pick up some spray paint or several rolls of ribbon to define the wire outline.

Mock up the layout of the coat hangers before connecting them. The shape consists of pairs of hangers set with their longest ends touching. Their hooks should face the same direction. Set four pairs of hangers in a circle with the curved ends of the hooks touching each other. Repeat this pattern for a second sheet of hangers. This time, set the pairs so that the two touching long ends sit over the hooks of the first layer's hangers.

Connect each hanger to its neighbor with a zip tie. The crafter recommends starting with just the first set of hangers. Zip together each pair at the corners, making up the shape's center. Follow with the group on top, adding zip ties to connect both layers alternately at the hooks and long sides. Once you've linked those points, lift the form to find loose spots that need another zip tie. You can also use a bit of hot glue to reinforce the hold. Finish by twining the lights around and through the openings in the snowflakes. The DIYer made the process easier by creating a spool for the string of lights out of a bunch of drinking straws.

If you're looking for ways to repurpose hangers made of wire, you can follow the same steps as you would for plastic hangers. Just top the wire snowflake with a few coats of white spray paint. However, since the wire is thinner, a bit of extra embellishment could go a long way. Though it is time-consuming, you can wrap each wire hanger in ribbon before connecting all of them and attaching the lights.