1 Week ‘Til Christmas – A Holiday Ornament to make your Holidays Merry & Bright!
Trimming the tree with lights… the evolution of an ornament!
This particular ornament has been in the “works” for a couple of months. First, I stamped a tree where the ink would not cooperate because of the knot in the wood disk would not absorb the ink as I would have liked (see photos below). So instead of scrapping the disk, I decided to proceed by adding water with Wink of Stella glitter pen brush on the highlights for shimmer, smaller pine trees with puffy snow embossing powder, and a large cut-out pine tree with small holly with berries to cover up the messed up inking below.
But something was missing on the large pine tree. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to add snow or ornaments, so the ornament sat and sat… waiting for inspiration (LOL). Then I picked up some Nuvo Glitter Accents – Fresh Snowfall. This was a nice addition, but what if I could add lights too? That could be totally cool!
I then found this Interactive Lava Lamp Card, that showed how they used LED Circut Sticker Lights (from Chibi) to light up their card. This was just the inspiration that I was looking for!
This best part of this idea (technic) was that I already had copper foil tape and cell batteries. All I needed to purchase were the lights! These are the only 3 things needed to add lights to your craft projects. [NOTE: Chibi Lights are pretty cool and super easy to use! The lights can be found in white (packs of 3 or 30), different colors, and special effects (blink, fade, twinkle, and heartbeat). Starter kits can also be purchased that includes copper tape and cell batteries.]
BUT, I wanted to figure out a way where I could turn the lights on and off without having to manually keep it on by pressing the copper tape to the battery. I needed an ON/OFF Switch.
I wondered if I could use the simple ON/OFF switch of a plastic tea light to work with the copper tape?
After popping off the plastic bulb of the tea light and cutting off the top with shears, I could see two wires (+ and -) that could be used to connect to the copper tape! I tested it first… and it WORKED! Yahoo!
First I carefully removed the large pine tree from the ornament (now you can see where the ink smeared over the knot).
Ornament Light Assembly:
- Cut about 4″ to 5″ length of copper tape and then cut it down the center giving you two strips of copper tape.
- Place the two strips parallel to each other, making sure the spacing matches the sensors of the LED Circut Sticker light and don’t touch. Centered the copper strips in the area that will be covered by the large pine tree.
- The copper strips will go up and over the top of the ornament and continue down the back of the wood disk ornament and connect to the tea light switch. Adhere each tealight wire to one of the copper strips.
- Note: I was able to place the small bunch of copper wires from the switch under the copper tape. The other wire, the thicker switch wire was shorter so I wrapped the other strip of copper tape around the wire before carefully placing the switch unit down on the wood disk. You want to make sure you have a good connection and that there is no chance of the wires crossing. While connecting the wires to the copper tape, I made sure the switch was on (with a fresh battery in place) and the lights were in place so I could see if I had a good connection when the lights turned on.
- Adhere the switch unit in place to the back of the wood disk with hot glue.
- Add pop dots between LED lights and on the outer tree branches. I added half of a wooden toothpick to the one tree branch that extended past the wood disk for extra support.
Color Recipes for these stamp sets:
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Thanks for stopping by for the Fourteenth installment of KSS’ Holiday Ornament Countdown to Christmas! One more ornament before Christmas!
Don’t forget to check in with the KSS Design Team and see what they have cooked up.
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