Stage 7 - Shadow House - Decorating Lights

When it comes to decorating the light bulbs on the outside of the house there are a huge number of ways of doing this.
Below are some samples of how I have decorated the lights on other houses.

 

The image on the left is decorated with orange silk flowers, wire and beads using a white light. The image on the right is decorated with pink silk flowers, fishing line and beads using a white light.

The image on the left is a flower made from plastic flowers, optic fiber and beads using a yellow light. The image on the right shows flowers made from black plastic grapes, plastic plants and using an orange light.

For my Shadow House I am going to decorate the blue lights exactly like the image above using the black grapes and plastic plants. Because these two house will be close together (sort of) I feel it would be alright to have the same sort of plant. I am just changing the colour light bulb.

Using a black plastic grape over the blue bulb.

 I start with a black plastic grape placed over the blue light bulb. I then stick a stiff plastic tube (a Yakult straw) inside. I then glue these together using the Tiger Grip glue I purchased from Spotlight. This glue glues most plastics (not all) together.

The base of the grape flowers is finished. The image on the left is unlit and the image on the right is lit.

This is the finished plant although saying that I believe I will darken the green leaves.

Stage 6 - Shadow House - Wiring Finished

I apologise for taking soo long to get back to this project but this is what happens - life gets in the way.
I have finally been able to spend some time finishing off the wiring. Well I say finishing - starting would be a better description because of course I ran out of materials and have had to stop and go and buy them but I will put up what I have completed at the moment.

These are images of how the 'vine' has been placed over the 'house'.

The first thing I needed to do was to find the photo (which of course I forgot to take) of the layout of the plastic tubing over the top of the gourds. (I will go back into the appropriate post and add this bit in as it will make things a lot easier to have on hand the photo). My post 'Using 'vines' to hold the wires for a hanging House' may help. Click here.
It is necessary to ensure that the layout allows for the wires to go into the rooms to connect up with the white plastic tubes that are sticking out of the shell (they are indicating the hole for the wires are to be placed into. See Shadow House - Stage 4 - Window Coverings).

Once I had placed the 'vine' over the gourd I then tied 'branches' that overlapped onto another together.

I then pushed the wires for the internal lights into the shells and out of the window so I could add the light bulbs and resistor. You will see that I like to cover them in the clear heat shrink tubing. This is because I have a head like a sieve and a forget where or if the resistor has been placed. This solves that problem. See the photo below on the left.

  

The photo on the left is one of the white lights for indoors. The photo on the right is the blue lights lit up.

In this model (to save money) I am using old Christmas lights that had run on solar power. Just because the solar power pack doesn't work does not mean that the lights do not work. I am using bright blue lights for the outside and white for the inside. Please note that if you choose to use Christmas lights yourself they generate just a fraction more heat than LED's. I will show you how I work around that later in the next post - Decorating the Light Bulbs.

When testing your lights use an LED - Tester.

 I have been able to come back to this blog.
When it comes to wiring everything together I have already written a post on this. Click here.
I have now included a photo (below) of the battery packs (7), the switch and the sets of wires (21 = 42 wires). I thought I should explain a few things. First every 5mil LED bulb as a 300ohms resister soldered to it. Second, as you can see if you look at the wiring closely that a number of wires have are around the wrong way.  Ordinarily my white is the positive and black the negative. This did not always turn out that way. You can see on the photo above the 'B' and the 'W' on the masking tape. Those letters tell me that I have the wires around the wrong way. The 'B' shows me that the 'black wire' is now the positive ( white wire) instead of the negative.
As I go through the whole process of wiring the positives and the negatives together it is necessary to test each sets of wires to make sure all wires end up being in the correct group. I also found taping the groups together with masking tape made the whole process a lot simplier.

Stage 5 - Shadow House - Wiring

I like to make vines to hold my wiring. One it enables me to fix any of the lights without having to tear the whole house apart if something goes wrong and second, for this type of house, it works in well and gives me the vines I would have placed around it anyway.

Another thing, bye the bye, is that I sometimes make fake vines (in that they have no wiring in them) just to fill up spaces were I think a vine needs to be but the wiring doesn't quite work.

The wiring does two things:- one it put light into rooms and I do not always light up every room. Second it allows me to have some sort of lit flowers or seed pods or ? on the outside. There are a huge range of things that can be added to the end of a vine to represent a flower, seed pods, creatures, all sorts of things.

For this house I am only doing lights inside and lit berries.

This image shows two things. First I have used a selection of different size clear plastic tubes to inset the electrical wiring through. Second it shows that I have numbered, top and bottom, each pair of wires. This will make it MUCH easier when it come to wiring them all up to batteries later.

This is the completed clear plastic tubing for the wiring of the Shadow House. I have used one large plastic tube for the main stem of my vine and from there I have added a variety of sizes as the plastic tubing has to have less and less wires go through it. I have taped the connections together with masking tape.

I have now wrapped the entire plastic tubing with fabric (make sure it is a fabric than can be painted - mine is calico) and then wrapped it with garden twine.

This is the finished vine. It has been painted dark brown with smudges of black over it.

Just a note:- If you where to have flashing lights in your model. They NEED to be on their own wiring system or else all lights will flash. 

So you know which of your lights are flashing I would suggest that you use a different colour code of wiring to the non-flashing lights. I have used black for negative and white for positive. If I had flashing lights I could change those wires to say, blue for negative and red for positive or any combination you like as long as when you get to the bundle of wires at the end (and I have 21pairs of wire) you need to know which wires belong to flashing LED's and which ones don't.

Another thing (and I shall be doing this) the lights to go inside the rooms will be white and the lights to go on the outside of the house will be blue. I NEED to know which wires are the white ones. I shall be colouring the tags at the bundle at the end (see right hand side of image above which shows you what a muddle the wires are).

Stage 4 - Shadow House - Window Coverings

This is stage 4 of the Shadow House. I am covering the windows. When I started (see stage 1,2,3) there was just cardboard over the windows.

1. Then I glued the wooden tubes over the cardboard.
2. Now I have covered them in air drying clay.
3. Covered them in some faux moss.
4. poked or drilled holes into the gourd so I can poke the electrical wire through them later. See where the white tubes are sticking out. These indicate the holes. I have deliberately left one room with no lights.
5. I have recovered, with 'wool moss' the edging of the windows. I am very pleased with the look.

The wooded tubes have been covered with air drying clay.

This is the finished look of the window covering. Painted and covered in faux moss.

I'm very pleased with the look. The white straws indicate where I will thread electrical wires later.

I have removed a window covering and shall fill this hole in. I needed somewhere to put the water tank and so this is it.