A beautiful night light as a gift for a holiday, can be purchased in the store. Such a thing is not particularly expensive, consumes little electricity. Also, if this gift was intended for a child, then it will also help to get rid of night fears. In general, there are some advantages. However, it is doubly pleasant for anyone to get a beautiful thing made by hand, using natural natural materials. The night lamp that I made in this master class is not intended for reading books, writing, or carrying out any work. It serves as a purely decorative element designed to decorate the bedroom, or living room, at night. To assemble such a night light, special efforts and skills will not be required. If only a little patience. Everyone can handle it.
You will need The tool:
Drill bit, under the diameter of the tube. Drill bit for 10 mm. The cutting disc is small (for the engraver). Drill, or engraver. A brush for applying varnish. A bowl and a stirring stick. The pliers are thin. Soldering iron, tin, and flux. A gun for hot glue. Consumables:
Pine bark. Moss is lichen. Varnish for wood. Soda, flour (1 tablespoon each). The dye is green. The LED is green at 5v (3 pcs.). The wire is thin (it is possible from old headphones). Aluminum tube (30 cm). Hotmelt. The glue is second. The paint is white acrylic. USB cable, for charging phones.
You will need
The tool:
Drill bit, under the diameter of the tube.
Drill bit for 10 mm.
The cutting disc is small (for the engraver).
Drill, or engraver.
A brush for applying varnish.
A bowl and a stirring stick.
The pliers are thin.
Soldering iron, tin, and flux.
A gun for hot glue.
Consumables:
Pine bark.
Moss is lichen.
Varnish for wood.
Soda, flour (1 tablespoon each).
The dye is green.
The LED is green at 5v (3 pcs.).
The wire is thin (it is possible from old headphones).
Aluminum tube (30 cm).
Hotmelt.
The glue is second.
The paint is white acrylic.
USB cable, for charging phones.
Manufacture of a night lamp
First you will need to prepare the material. The base of the night light will be made of a thick piece of pine bark. You can find it in any park, forest belt, in a pile of firewood in the country. I plucked it from a dried-up tree in the forest. It is not necessary to torment living trees, besides, the bark is removed much easier from a dried log.
You also need to pick some lichen mosses.
They also grow on the trunks and branches of old trees. These are wood fungi-parasites, so we will not cause damage to the tree, rather the opposite. Next, a piece of bark must be dried for a couple of days on the radiator. Mosses, on the contrary, should be placed in a plastic bag and left in a cool place. Because if the moss crumbles, it will become brittle, and it will not work with it. After 2 days, remove the bark from drying, and cover with a generous layer of acrylic varnish.
After this procedure, we again remove the varnishing bark to dry.
Until the next day. However, during the time while the bark is drying, you will not have to sit idle. It is necessary to make mushrooms. First you need to prepare something like a polymer mass. Of course, you can buy it in the store, but if you really do the thing yourself, then let it be 100%. So, for the polymer, we will need a bowl, 1 tablespoon of flour and soda, a green food dye, a stirring stick, and the same acrylic varnish.
Pour flour and soda into a bowl, pour in about 1.5 tablespoons of varnish, a little dye, and mix everything with a stick.
Stir until the dough is mixed with a stick. When it becomes dense enough, you can get it out of the bowl, and knead it in the palm of your hand, periodically dropping it in soda so that it does not stick to the palm.
When the dough stops sticking to the palms, we form mushroom caps from it, and put them on something rounded, so that the desired shape is preserved when solidifying. I took the removable halves from the light bulbs for the stands.
Ready-made hats are also removed for a day to dry.
Now let's take care of the mushroom legs. From a thin aluminum tube (I took it from an old antenna), we cut 3 pieces 10-12 cm long, and bend them into a smooth angle, about 100 degrees. Like this:
The end that will be attached to the hat can be slightly rolled out so that there is a better grip with glue.
Next, we apply white acrylic paint on the finished legs, and leave to dry.
The next day, we drill 3 holes in a lacquered piece of bark. Under the diameter of the tubes. In any order.
Next, with a drill bit of 10 mm, we drill recesses in the frozen caps, ml 5 deep, and align the edges of the holes.
We solder wires to the LED contacts. Red to the plus, so as not to confuse in the future.
We push the wiring into the tube so that the contacts of the diode do not touch the metal.
We isolate it with hot glue.
In the recess made in the hat, we also pour hot glue, and immediately put a leg with an LED at the end there. We wait until it freezes.
The other end of the leg is inserted into the hole in the bark. We fix it with hot glue from the inside, and a drop of second glue from the outside.
We do the above procedures with the remaining parts of the mushrooms. Here's what should happen:
Next, we solder together, in parallel, the contacts of the LEDs.
We take a cable with a USB plug, clean the wiring, and solder the red wire from the USB to the red wires of the diodes.
In all USB cables, the red wire is always connected to the positive contact. A USB cable can be attached to a night light of any length. Whichever is convenient for you. Personally, it is more convenient for me to attach a small wire. It is more convenient to connect an external charger to it.
Alternatively, you can use a USB extension cable that will be powered by a charger from the 220 mains. Next, we fasten the soldered twists to the bark from the inside with hot glue, and at the same time we isolate the twists with it.
In the upper and lower parts of the ready-made lamp, we drill holes for screws, for mounting to the wall.
The protruding screw caps, after installation, can be covered with hot glue and moss.
Now we decorate the lamp with moss. In any order.
In the end, here's what should happen:
Yes, I liked the nightlight so much that I couldn't resist and made another one for myself. And one more thing: LEDs for a standard charger are needed exactly for 5v. If you bring a light bulb with a lower consumption, for example by 3 or 4 meters, it will get very hot, which will lead to melting of the hot glue. Then the hats will simply slide off the legs of the mushrooms. Well, if you bring light elements with high consumption, then the night light will simply not shine as brightly as it should. Since all ORIGINAL chargers (not counterfeit) have an exact voltage of 5v, there will be no problems with the voltage. But you should pay attention to the current strength. It should not exceed 500-550 mA. It can be smaller. The main thing is no more. Otherwise, the LEDs will start to get very hot, which can lead, again, to the melting of the hot glue. And the LEDs themselves will fail before their due date.
Such chargers used to be bundled with phones that are now obsolete. Surely many thrifty users still have these chargers lying around somewhere in the back drawer.