The Lights Project - Light Boxes and Lanterns

Welcome to Day#1 of The Lights Project!

If you're just joining us on this madcap pre-Christmas adventure, here's a quick intro. 

We'll be using different kinds of ready-to-play light sources today, no extra circuitry required. They will, literally, be chucked into containers and turned into instant toys. Depending on how fancy you want them to be, they could take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours to put together.

Let me first tell you a little bit about these light sources.

This first one is a string of STRALA lights from IKEA. 

They come in three varieties: a shorter string of red (or plain white) for $3: 

and a longer string of plain white, with accompanying paper garland decorations, for $5. You can see both sets in the picture below:

IKEA stocked them for the holiday season, and they were so popular in our local Twin Cities store that by November, they were all sold out. The staff divulged that IKEA gets their holiday merchandise in two shipments - one in September and the other in October. By the time most people are actually in the mood to shop for Christmas, all the good stuff is gone. Good to know, because when I picked up my first few sets in October, got inspired to start the Lights Project and then returned after Thanksgiving to buy more sets for my participants, the pickings were very slim. Next year I'll plan ahead.

Despair not, dear friends, though. I've seen abundant quantities of similar battery-operated light sets in the Christmas aisles of Target. They run around $7 a set, and come in more color combinations than IKEA's, including a multicolored string that you'll see in Katie's post next week.

Here are some other kinds of ready-to-play light sources. This is the ubiquitous LED flickering tea light. 

You can get pairs for $3 at Hobby Lobby, 

but I stocked up at Sam's Club:

You can't beat 24 tea lights AND 48 batteries for $9+. The batteries alone are worth the price. The kids already have plans to set up midnight feasts and birthday cakes and all kinds of lanterns in the basement. 

There are also LED tap lights like these, from hardware stores. 

They cost a little more, but they are bright white, unflickering and perfect for balloon lightsabers and fortune teller sideshow attractions!

And now, some making! 

Project #1 is the ridiculously easy, incredibly effective and wonderfully versatile Trofast Light Box!

Here's how simple it is.

First, you take one of those Trofast storage tubs that everyone within driving distance of an IKEA will have in their homes.

Turn the lid upside down and arrange the string of lights evenly all over it. Stick the wires in place with masking tape.

Insert 2 AA batteries, turn on the lights,

and invert the box over the lid. Voila! Instant light box.

The naturally translucent plastic material of this box automatically diffuses the light.

Use it for color-mixing (these are the kids' color paddles) 

or tracing. Here are two sheets of regular printer paper superimposed on the light box - and it works even with card stock. All you sewing and embroidering folks out there, you know you need one of these. My kids are into tracing line art now, so they were very pleased with this function.

Our light box was a temporary set-up just for this post, but if I were making it more permanent, I'd line the lid and inner walls of the Trofast tub with aluminum foil. This reflects the light back into the box, and prevents it from leaking out. You'd get an overall brighter light box and no wasted light.

If you're game for a little knife work, here's Project #2: the ridiculously easy Lighted Milk Carton House. Everyone has made one of these, so I won't bore you with details. You'll need a little house-shaped carton

cut apart like this.

Cut out windows with a craft knife, throw in an LED tea light and tape the open edges shut. Again, this was a demo model for this post, and if I were doing this "for real", I'd paint the carton so it's more like a real house and less like a lighted dairy advert.

Project #3 is a prettier variation of Project #2. It is also reminiscent of that first lantern I made when I was 11, except more elegant and without the copious amounts of scotch tape.

I cut out some corrugated cardboard in this shape and, with my craft knife, carved out window designs. If paper-cutting isn't your thing, just cut out plain rectangular windows.

Here's the backside, showing my pencil lines.

I glued parchment paper (you can use wax paper or any other translucent paper) on the backsides of each of the windows

and made a little circular holder for the tea light on the inside of the base. I cut a hole for access to the on-off switch. Before assembling the lantern, put the tea-light in the holder, tape it in place (so it won't pop out when you push the switch from the outside) and hot glue the lantern together.

To make the hook, I bent some copper wire into fancy swirls with pliers.

Here is the completed lantern! My kids really like this one, especially because they can hang it from places and carry it around, dangly-like.

So there you are: 3 simple light-boxes made with battery-operated lights. Can't get enough? Here's a follow-up idea: Lamps - old and new. Do some research with your kids and recreate cardboard versions of old lamps people used in the days before electricity. Make cardboard candles! Make Aladdin's magic lamp (minus the genie). Make Morrocan lanterns like Katie's. Make lighted garlands using paper cups, plastic easter eggs, paper sandwich shapes. Make lanterns you can rotate to throw shadows on the ceiling (put a smaller cardboard cylinder within a bigger one, both with windows cut out of their sides). Enjoy playing!

Join us tomorrow to see what MaryAnne and her kids made with her STRALA string!

Let There Be Light!

I am very excited to launch another series! Not sewing this time - hurrah!

Every Christmas, I make a mental list of gifts to buy for the kids. I also make a mental list of gifts to sew for the kids, but I throw that list away very quickly, because it usually translates to staying up till 3 am, night after night, all through December. So I buy them gifts instead. Now, standing in the aisles of Target (or the virtual aisles of amazon.com), I am always struck by the number of toys that talk, move, sing, do back-flips, twirl pizzas, record your voice and do laundry. OK, maybe not laundry - that was just me fantasizing. Crafty folks all over blogland, however, sometimes disprefer toys like those, opting instead for the quieter, less fidgety, ostensibly more imagination-stirring handmade variety. I'm all for quieter, but I have a confession: I think toys that do things are cool. I also think playing with toys that do things doesn't stifle one's imagination/brain development (ever met an electrical engineer who wasn't smart?) But wait - want to know what's even cooler than toys that do things? 

Handmade toys that do things!

You all know that I shamelessly love cardboard, right? And that, since I was a very little girl, I've made cardboard toys. My kids love the cardboard stuff I make, not the least because they can scribble all over them with markers. They will play with them for months, and go into mourning when we throw out the ratty carcass of a much-loved cardboard car, or scooter, or dollhouse. "When can we make another car, Mum?" they always ask. And those are just the toys that are static boxes. When I've thrown in a bit of circuitry or mechanics, they are beside themselves. They flip a switch and a lamp lights up. They turn a dial and it swings back. They spin a crank and an elevator moves. It's the same handmade cardboard toy, but their play is now taken up a notch and off they run, with new ideas and even more fantastical pretend-play stories.

There's Physics in it, yes. And I used to teach it, so that's not very fair, I hear you say. But hey - I was 11 when I made my first wired lantern. With rubbish electronic parts that I scavenged from who knows where. It was hopelessly amateurish, with scotch tape holding everything together and sometimes had to be given a hard kick to work, but it felt like magic, making light happen in a paper toy.

Some years ago, I started writing a few posts here on simple from-scratch circuitry, but I knew it could sound a little intimidating if you've never played with stuff like that before. Which brings us to this series. 

We're going to be making some toys together. I'll show you what to buy, where to buy it, how to use it, some convenient short-cuts, and some pretty awesome projects that you and the kids can put together. Some projects are 10-minute simple, some are several-day simple, and one particular one took me -cough - two years (but only because I procrastinated). They all have one thing in common - lights. Nothing fancy - just a string of battery-operated lights like this one, 

a couple of batteries and some cardboard.

To make it even more fun (and to prove that other people who aren't retired Physics teachers love it, too), I've invited a few friends to party with me! I gave them a little set of battery operated lights from IKEA that costs between $2.99 and $4.99

and invited them to go play with their kids. They'll be here to share what they made! 

From those self-contained light sets, we'll move on to a few projects involving circuits you can build from scratch with LEDs,

resistors

 and toggle switches.

And that's just the circuitry. 

Imagine all the cardboard toys we've made to showcase them! 

See you back tomorrow!

Light Dawns

Okay, so I'm probably the last person in the cosmos to come to this earth-shattering realization but yesterday, it dawned on me that baked goods count as hand-made/home-made gifts. 

Duh.

So there I was, baking up a storm last weekend, thinking, "Well, good thing you're not making handmade gifts this Christmas, or imagine how busy you'd be, with all this baking-cookies-for-teachers already going on!"

Why do I not have a brain? Or, why does my brain compartmentalize itself so effectively that it has never occurred to me that baking = sewing = cooking = cardboarding = crafting?

Anyway, so - phooey- it turns out that, in spite of my best efforts not to, I am doing the Handmade Thing this Christmas. And I worked so hard to neglect my sewing machine this advent season. Darn!

But since this is Advent after all, and the season of goodwill and warm fuzzy thoughts, let me reframe my pathetic epiphany for you all: you know all those times you slave in front of a hot stove at 5pm, cooking meals for your family? Even if it's Hamburger Helper? Or Rice-a-roni? That's handmade, friends. You're crafting with food, and you're giving your family a gift you made yourself. Sometimes with swearing and grumbling, yes, and sometimes only to prevent starvation, but you do it because you love them. And because you do it every day, several times a day in mind-numbing repetition, it also counts as mass-producing. Handmade Mass-producing - now doesn't that make you feel capable, productive, efficient and superhuman? Yay, you! 

Have I Lost It If I Went Shopping At RadioShack For Craft Supplies?

No one said Christmas crafting had to involve felt, glitter, or gingerbread, right? 


Some friends and I are putting together a little crafting series for you! Maybe even quite a different crafting series, I might add. More soon!

Mini Mail Kit in Action Pack Magazine

Hellooooooooooo!

I am pleased to introduce the latest issue 

of Whip Up's Action Pack magazine!

This is a bumper issue of crafts, recipes and traditions for the holidays. Contributors hail from all over the world where they live and/or originate - Australia, Finland, Sweden, Italy, France, USA, Denmark, Istanbul, England and Mexico. This issue has 80 pages and 23 crafts. Here is a sample of some of the goodies within:

Action Pack Magazines are e-magazines full of crafts for kids in the elementary and middle school age range. The features are full of color photos and instructions written for the young crafter. 

Each issue has a different theme- and what awesome themes they are!

• Paper + Beeswax (Origami projects, beeswax & honey projects)
• Seeds + Beads (Beaded dragonfly, cooking and growing seeds)
• Sew + Tea (learn about tea, sew a tea cosy & a play tea set)
• Great Outdoors (bumper issue 80 pages of outdoor crafts, adventures and cooking)
• Chalk + Cheese (Learn how to make your own chalk, cheese and other crafty projects using these materials)
• Zap + Zest (Bumper issue around the themes of electricity and citrus)
• Sticks + Stones (Projects using lots of natural materials).

I am honored to have been invited to be a part of this Celebration issue - here is Emily demonstrating our miniature mail kit.

I love those red pillar boxes I'd read about as a child in storybooks set in other countries (England, in this case). I'd always felt that other people's mailboxes were far prettier than the ones we had in our country. And with Christmas around the corner and family far away, we thought we'd pay tribute to good old-fashioned snail mail greetings. So we made our own pillar box, complete with templates for tiny envelopes, aerogrammes, postcards and greeting cards for the kids to color, design, write in and send (or pretend to, anyway)!  

Visit Whipup for more information on purchasing the Celebration Issue or back issues of Action Pack! Enter the code "WPContributor" at the checkout to get 10% off everything in the Action Pack and Whipup.net stores!

Painted Christmas Trees

Finally, something Christmassy!

The girls and I painted Christmas trees last weekend.

The blanks themselves are as gorgeous as the painted trees.

We sat at our kitchen table with our acrylic paints, 

paintbrushes and toothpicks, and painted.

Jenna did these: 

Emily did this:

Kate did these:

That purple-and-yellow tree is just beautiful. 

I think it is my favorite.

I painted, too

but I think I got the snow position reversed on this tree.

And this one, on hindsight, looks like a caterpillar.

I liked this one, at least.

One out of three. Ah, well. 

They look pretty together, anyway.

Especially out in the snow. The real 24-degree snow.

Which, now that it has finally hit us, 
is making it look a lot like Christmas.

Happy Advent, everyone!