Wiring of a Model

This image shows the gourd lamp shades I am dealing with. The white one comes from the bathroom. The brown one comes from the bedroom.
I have shown the clear plastic tubing that will eventually hold the wiring and how I have started wrapping the tubing in bandages.

I have decided to add blue LED's to the centre of each of these flowers as each of them have four 'stemens' created out of gold coloured wire with a matalic blue seed bead on top.

I have decided to add a yellow flickering LED into these three (and there are another three 'plants' somewhere else).
The plants have been created out of ornamental gourds, which are thin shelled, small, round and light in colour. I then painted glow in the dark lines down their sides. I had to try lots of different glow in the dark paints until I found one I was happy with. Even though, saying that and as you know, the glow in the dark paint does not last for long when the lights are out so ... I cut the top off the gourd, removed the seeds and filled it with silicone and then placed the little white flower stamens in the top. The flower stamens have come from the centre of boganvillia silk flowers. Now I am going to place the yellow flickering LED in the base of each one so that only a tiny amount of light can be seen.

I purchased several different thickness (10mil & 6mil internal width) of clear plastic tubing and then layed the thicker of the two over the top of my model to see where I would want my 'vines' to be placed.


This image shows how I have re-stuck the three round gourd 'plants' that now have the yellow flickering LED's in them and how I have used a piece of large clear plastic tubing to hold the six wires. Each set of wires (2- black (positive) - white (negative) have been taped with a different colour electrical tape at each end of the wire. This is so that I can see which 'plant' belongs to which set of wires. This is just incase one light blows. I will be able to tell which wires I am dealing with.
To the left of that tubing in another thinner tube, where the bandges are wrapped around it, I have added a 'branch' of another set of wires.
In this image I have cut a hole in the piece of clear tubing. This allows me to add a branch if necessary (which can be seen in the next image) or if necessary when I have a long piece of tubing to allow me a new vantage point from where I can push the wiring to the end of the tube.

I use a silicone that is acid free (in my case I use Selly's Glass silicone sealant - clear. It is suitable to use for fish tanks).  I then wrap bandages around the silicone and the 'branch' tubing and tie it off with fishing line.

This is the completed circuit for four flowers. You can plainly see the different coloured tags on the sets of wires. Red to red, blue to blue etc.

To wire LED's I do it thus:- I suppose at this point I should put a disclaimer in. "I am wiring this model up myself and even though I am letting you know how I have done that I take no resonsability if you copy my technique and something goes wrong as I do not know what you have done."
There that should do it.
Now:-

LED's are polar, that is the current goes in one end and comes out another.
Now this business with LED's, resistors, omes ect are complicated to my mind which has enough trouble doing my tax let alone this stuff.
I strongly recommend that you look to the web and youtube sites to help you out.

What I have found out is that EVERY LED light needs a resistor. The problem comes when I want to know what size resistor I need. The un-mathical brain that I have struggles as if it is being smother by an averlanch of snow to understand this stuff so luckily for me I met a man who said, "Here just use these." and then he handed me heaps of little blue five banded resistors. So I have. Sorry I know its not much help.
Now you can see in the image above that I have soldered the resistor to the positive side of the LED.
The positive side of the LED is the longer of the two 'legs'. Sometimes I find it difficult to tell so I trim the negetaive side in half. I also trim the tails of the resistors so they are just over 1cm long.

The image above is the LED for the white gourd lampshade. The piece of balsa wood that has been placed just under the bulb is there only to 'space' the bulb within the lampshade. So it stays central.

Now once I have soldered both lengths of wire. Choose which colour wire you want to use as positive and negative. use 18 gauge wire. Use the same colours throughout and make sure the same colour is used for the negative and the same colour for the poitive.
One (white - negative) on to the shorter leg of the LED and the (black - positive) on to the end of the resistor that has (itself) been soldered onto the longer leg of the LED I then slip over the entire section a piece of heat shrink tubing. This is to insulate the electricity that will be passing through the LED. I have also found that it is most important that the tubing be pushed up to the extreme end of the LED bulb so that NO 'leg or metal' is showing. I had a short in that one of my ''leg's (it made no difference which one) had 1mil showing and one of my gold coloured stamenes touched it and the light would not work untill I removed the stamen.

In this image it shows that I have used white heat sensitative tubing on the white gourd lamp shade. I have then added four tops of the pods from the Yates tree as the 'pole' to keep the lamp straight. The Yates is an Austrlaian native tree.