Scargill

It was one of those crappy white plastic window decorations with a dozen or so filament lamps that you could hardly make out what it was…(and which used to pack in frequently)   and so, after getting the Christmas lights out of the loft and doing the usual sift through for duffers, this one ended up sitting by the bin (we don’t have any spares of old fashioned Xmas lights) until this morning until I decided to try to give it a facelift.

Thankfully the old light fittings were simply pressed into place and game off with a tug, leaving a more or less flat base on which to work.  cut the red, green and blue LED strip into the minimum lengths (3 LEDs) and simply stuck them on as best I could – then wired up – merely keeping all the + together – and all the – together. I used the thinnest wire I could find and in some cases merely used bare copper wire to join them – simple enough and remember all of this is running at 12v. I found a spare 12v 1amp plug-in-the-wall supply – soldered the lead via a loop to make sure there’s no stress on the joint and….

Actually you could just start with a white plastic board and mark out any Xmassy shape without too many tight corners..

The photo does not do this any justice (and I’ve since filled that right corner) – this thing is bright as hell – you’d be able to see it streets away in a straight line – and yet takes less juice than the comparatively boring original.  LED strip is cheap from Ebay (5 metres self-adhesive of any colour is maybe £8 or so – unless you get ripped) and so the total cost of this would be just a few pounds. Better than throwing it in the bin!