If Daylight Savings Time has started, can patio season be far behind? Many of us look upon the arrangement of furniture and accessories for our outdoor living areas with every bit as much attention as we give any interior room.

And considering the amount of time we spend outside, especially during the evenings, feasting on grilled chicken or burgers, it makes sense to put time into patio decor. Strings of decorative light hung in sheltered areas, under eaves or around the inside perimeter of a market umbrella make an evening spent on your own patio or deck as festive as one spent at your favorite restaurant.

Making your own light covers is a great way to customize your patio. You can use colors that tie in with the cushions on chairs, tablecloth or other fabrics. Or just choose colors that blend with those of the outside of your house.

Following are directions for light covers made from small paper cups, with ideas for other materials to use, as well. Whatever style of covers you make, you'll need the basic strings of lights. Unless you are feeling very industrious, don't use the long strings of lights made for decorating Christmas trees. For one thing, the lights are very close together, which doesn't leave enough space between them for the covers to show effectively, and also, there may be as many as one hundred lights on a strand.

The best solution is to go to the craft store and find strings of decorative lights with seasonal covers that are marked down because the holiday has passed. Simply remove the manufactured covers and replace with your own handmade ones.

Many of us also like to use these strings of lights inside our homes as accents. They are popular in children's rooms, so making a string of lights with your child to hang in his or her room would be a fun way to spend some time together.

Dinosaur or ballerina lights: make as below for polka dot covers, but after painting the cups, apply your child's favorite stickers to the shades.

Punched light covers: make as below for polka dot covers, but after painting each cup a solid color, us a large needle to punch a pattern of holes in each cup. The light will come through the tiny holes.

Origami light covers: regular readers will remember this idea from a past column. Make simple origami cups, then cut a small hole in the base of each just large enough for the light to push through. Using patterned paper makes these especially interesting.

Snow cone lights: Use pointed snow cone cups, painted your choice of colors. You may wish to paint the inside of the cups as well, using a lighter shade of whatever color you have chosen for the outside of the cup. When dry, snip a hole at the point for the light to fit in, then cut the rim of the cup into scallops or points. They will resemble flowers.

What You Need

String of lights
Acrylic craft paints in your choice of colors (Note: if your cups have patterns printed on them, keep in mind that darker blues and greens will cover more effectively and with fewer coats of pain than warm or light colors)
Box of 3 ounce bathroom paper cups
Xacto knife
Soft flat brush, about 1/2" wide
Package of office dots in various colors, or all white or all one color, if you like.
Glue stick

What to Do:

Begin by painting the paper cups. First, with a lightly loaded brush, paint around the rim of the cup, leaving the rim itself white and painting as close to it as possible. The rim will act as a barrier to the paint, so with a few tries, you should be able to cut a clean edge with your brush. Finish painting the first coat, including the bottom of the cup. Set aside to dry, and paint the first coat of the remaining cups in the same manner. Do all of one color, then all of the next if using different colors.

Paint second coat in the same manner as the first. Let dry. Hold a painted cup up to the light. If you can see the printed pattern of the cup, paint another coat.

Pick up one sheet of office dots. Cut through the dots and backing so that the dots are cut in half. You will use these around the top and bottom edges of the cups. This is much faster than cutting some dots in half as you place them

The adhesive on the office dots is poor, so you need to use the glue stick on the back of each dot to adhere it to the cup. Apply three half dots evenly spaced around the top rim of the cup. Then apply three whole dots evenly spaced around the middle of the cup, the three half dots around the bottom of the cup. As you do this you will see how to space the dots evenly.

To make the hole for the light to go into the cover, use the Xacto knife to make an "X" shaped cut in the center of the bottom of the cup, with each half of the x being about 1/4" inch long. (You might want to practice this on an unpainted cup)

Then push one of the lights through the hole into the cup. First, the light will slide easily through the hole. Then carefully push it in a little further so that the socket of the light is also inside the cup. Proceed until all of the lights are covered.