Final, Final Working Miniature Arco Lamp Tutorial and Pictures

The prototype for the working miniature Arco lamp is finished.  The two improvements from my last post is the addition of lead tape, to prevent the tipping, and a marblized cover surrounding the battery box.  It is done.  Cue Handel's Messiah.  I will be selling this on ebay or etsy, I haven't decided which.  And, before I do so, I have to work out the cost, so I can recoup my material outlay when I sell all of the Arcos that I can make before I bore of it.

The complete tutorial, with sources for the harder to find items, follows:

Materials:                      Source   

3/32" aluminum tubing           K & S

Plastic silver Xmas bulbs       Kurt S. Adler

Knife                           I had this on hand

Sandpaper                       I had this on hand

AA Battery box                  Pololu

AA Batteries                    CVS

2 strand mini electrical wire   Dollhouse Heaven

Shrink tubing                   Dollhouse Heaven

1.5 volt LED bulb               Dollhouse Heaven

Solder & soldering iron         I had on hand
Super Glue                      Loctite
Lead Tape                       Find Tape

Optional material:

Plastic spray paint             Rustoleum

Painter's tape                  3M

Polymer clay                    Sculpey

Pasta Machine                   Amsco

Procedure:

• Tape off the switch of the battery box and spray with plastic spray paint.  Set aside to dry. 
• Insert the 2-strand electrical wire into the aluminum tube to prevent kinking while bending the tube into a curve.  Then bend the wire.
• I used 3 colors of Sculpey clay to fashion a "marble" cover for the battery box.  I chopped the white into 1/8" bits, and added small, ball-bearing size bits of black and pewter (which has a nice sparkle to it like real marble).  I rolled this into a log and twisted and folded it until it was nicely streaked.  The I put this through a pasta maker, and cut out the sides and top of the box.  The top also needs a hole for the tube to fit through.  Once baked, I used Loctite gel glue to glue the sides and top together.
• Using a hot knife (I run mine through the flame of my gas stove), slice off part of the Christmas ornament on the side with the opening for the wire.  Sand the edges smooth.  Take a straightened out paperclip, heat that, and push into the ornament to make a hole for the tube to pass through.
• Strip the wires from the battery box and the 2-strand wire to a size you feel comfortable with.  It should be less than an inch, the smaller the better.  Feed a small piece (just long enough to cover the bare wires plus a little extra) of shrink tube onto wire, and the solder the wires from the 2-strand wire to the wires from the battery box.  Heat the shrink tube to fit tight.
• On the other end of the 2-strand wire, send the marble cover and the cut ornament down the tube,  then strip this other end to a short length that you are comfortable with.  Place a small bit of shrink tube (again, just enough to cover the bare wires, plus a little extra) over the bulb to the other end of wire.
• Open the panel on the top inside of the battery box.  Pull the wire taut and push the extra into the open space on top.  Replace the panel.
• Put a dot of glue at the opening of the battery box to secure the tubing to the box, and another dot on the ornament to secure it to the tube.
• If necessary, place lead tape along inside of marble cover to weigh it down more.
• Lift marble cover, toggle the switch, and enjoy!

Funnies - These Just Made Me Laugh, So I'm Sharing!



Poor Cookie.  He's always been a bit slow.




This appeals to my computer
programming, flowchart side, and
THE-ONLY-HIGH-SCHOOL-MUSICAL-MOVIE
-that will-ever-count side.



This is only funny to those who
eat xioa ban (did I spell that right?)

 


A cross-eyed rhinocereros.  It's just such a bizarre take on things.



  


Because I've considered making this exact thing,
and fully expect it to look like the bottom photo.



 



Yup, everyday.



 

Plain silly.

Unreasonable Effectiveness

The mold box worked well. 
The mold, however,
was sadly a complete bust.



Lego scaffolding as glue dries

Since I assume most of you are not holding a master's of education in Mathematics, you may not be familiar with the phrase "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics".  It was coined by Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner in a paper of the same name.  It basically states that math not only describes but predicts phenomena in the natural world, which, if you think about it, is amazing.  Some famous examples are when Newton invented calculus before he needed it for his Laws of Motion (was this man ever a genius!), Maxwell predicted radio waves with his equations before Heinrich Hertz detected them, and how the seemingly quixotic 19th century knot theory work eventually helped explain quantum field theory.  No one could imagine life without their cellphones, but did you know that without fractals, in order to pick up all of the frequencies for Bluetooth, walkie-talkie and Wi-Fi, it would look like a porcupine?  And even though we haven't found them yet, Einstein presaged the existence of black holes.  Math is the bomb (literally, if we're talking about the A-bomb)!  Ha!  Math humor.

A lego lathe!!!

Ah-hem...There is a less well-known phrase called "the unreasonable effectiveness of Legos", which pertains to the unexplained usefulness in miniature making of the already very cool Lego.  The phrase is not as famous because I just made it up.  I have used it as doll house scaffolding, as well as an easily assembled and disassembled mold box.  Has anyone found another use for Legos besides their use as a building toy?  I can envision all sorts of uses.

We Interrupt this Miniature and Teaching Blog...



Hello, gorgeous!

 

Before

                                                                                                                    Anyone who has taken up a craft can tell you that the volume of tools and materials can build up rather quickly.  The cardboard boxes and plastic bags weren't making my kitchen look any more streamlined, let me tell you.  I found this bedside table in the garbage across from my in-laws.  The first day it was out, it was without its drawers.  Awww, so sad.  But then, the next day, there they were, happily reunited!  There was a hole on the top of the dresser, and there were no handles.  But, I never let that stop me.  I had a pair of pulls with a nice shape but hideous finish that I found around a year ago that would be perfect for it.  So, out came the wood putty, the sandpaper and the primer, and voila!  A new bedside table.  The former K-Mart blue light special, press-board, faux wood grain dresser (I was soooo fond of it, as you can tell) is now in the basement, holding all of my craft items, and the bedroom has a bright, white dresser.  Ta-tee!   







Back from the Magic Kingdom

I felt slightly guilty about
that bacon on my plate

Mishka, Mooshka, Mickey Mouse.  Did you miss me, my throngs of loyal readers?  We just returned from our second Florida family vacation, and this time we submitted to the all powerful mouse.  Perhaps I am turning into an old, sentimental fool, or maybe it's the rock bottom, third-ring-of-hell expectation I held prior to our visit, but I have nothing snarky or ironic to say about it.  None of the characters I met smelled bad, the rides are hokey in the nicest possible way, and the breakfast that looked like a rip-off when I reserved it powered us through the day without needing to buy the dreaded and woeful Theme Park Family Meal of Desperation.  All in all, it was a magic kingdom.  After receiving her last dosage of magical elixir at 3 p.m., L held up beautifully despite not being able to breathe the night before (it turns out that breathing is a crucial ingredient to sleep).  Add to all of that a wonderful hostess, beautiful weather, world-class beaches, and a mid-winter visit with Nana and Gramps, and I have just had the best vacation I can remember in a long time.  This trip has made huge strides in restoring February to its rightful place as just another month, and, quite possibly a month I could actually look forward to once again.

My Arco Lamp - Finished

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here it is.  My first finished Arco lamp.  This one is battery powered.  I learned a lot.  Here is what I will try differently next time:

1. Paint the inside of the ornament.  You can see even in the scanty 1.5 volts of light in this picture that the light shows the light patches from the inside of the ornament.  So I will paint the inside on the next one.
2. Use a non-wired LED light.  Some come with miniature conductor wire attached, and other just have pins.  I will use the pin type from now on, since the wire, once I put the heat shrink tube on it, is too thick to pass through the aluminum tube. 
3. Spray paint the battery cover.  The mod podge looks good except at the seams.  Spray paint will give even coverage, although I will have to then emulate marble with paint.  Not sure if this will be the easier route or not.
4. Open the little cover on the inside of the battery case while soldering.  After I soldered the wires, I was trying to tuck the excess in the battery holder, when I realized there is a little cover inside that can be popped off.  This will make the wiring easier.
5. Make the base even weighter.  Even with the AA batteries in the lamp, it is STILL top-heavy.  I'm looking into different size washers of brass or stainless steel to attach to the base to make it heavier.  Or, should I try to fashion a sculpey cover, and the combined weight of the batteries, holder and sculpey will balance this creation perfectly?  In any case, prepare to be dazzled with Arco lamp version 2.0!

Thinking of Building a Dollhouse?

Have you ever been in the dollhouse kit market?  Have you ever noticed how many "unfinished" dollhouses you can score online?  Does the fact that there are so many unfinished dollhouses give you pause?  Well, it didn't stop me.  I seem to have the overly optimistic outlook, or I believe that everyone else is an idiot and I will succeed where so many others have failed.  And, inevitably, I figure it out; making a dollhouse is a major pain in the bazumpa. 

I purchased my dollhouse kit with idealistic, soft-lit visions of my daughter and me working on it together.  We would share the creation of it, smiling and making eye contact in slow motion, and we'd treasure the memories forever.  It would be part of my own personal drug commercial montage.  In reality, I haven't let her do anything except paint the roof, and the most vivid memory she may have of the process is when I strung together the F-word with BS in front of her this morning.  I asked her not to touch it while the glue dries and she proceeded to "walk" her new plushy friend through the front door.  F-ing BS!

So, as someone who has experienced the joy of building something like this "together", let me just give you this one little piece of advice: DON'T.  It will fall apart.  You will wallpaper the wrong walls.  You will get splinters and none of it is fun.  Not even the finished product is satisfying because everytime you look at it you see the crooked walls and the glue blobs and all the other flaws.  And the thing is so fragile there is absolutely no way that you would allow a child to play with it.  Oh, heavens, no.

Perhaps someday, far in the future, she and I will gaze at it from the couch, a mug of coffee in our manicured hands, while the next generation plays with it.  Sun will stream through the window, making our blown-out hair glow like halos, and we'll think of the days when we built it together.  Until then, I'm hating every minute of it.