Introduction: Billow Wall Fluorescent (&adenosine monophosphate; Noticeboard)

I've been making lights with LEDs for ages and thought it about sentence I show you how to draw something colorful, just from a bit of cheap led strip and a little of cardboard.

All you're passing to need to buy is the led leach and a power supply for it. The rest of the parts you'll likely have hanging around the house, or in the shed.

With led plunder, you really get what you pay for. A deal of hardware stores ancestry cheap LED strip these days and usually they come with their own power supply so you just plug them in, they light up and that's it. Best of all they are very abject power, then are secure for us all on the planet.

Step 1: What You'll Need

-12V led strip, near 4 feet of it (the easiest typewrite to use is pre fitted with a power connective)

-A Power Supply for your led strip (if you brought a outfit, it should accompany a power supply that just plugs into it. If you need to buy peerless it'll need a 12V output. The LED comic strip I'm using Hera uses 5W per metre so a power supply rated at 1Amp would be more than enough, that's what I'm victimization).

-a pencil

-a sheet of paper, 50cm x 50cm (or 2' x 2')

-unlifelike, 2 sheets of similitude flute cardboard as wel 50cm x 50cm (you can use an old box because these will be hidden in the finished nibble)

-tape (embarrassing mag tape, packing tape or masking paper)

-sharp craft knife

-scissors, maybe... if you Don River't like knives...

-if you want to make the upgraded version you'll need some nice fabric cable and a plastic canvass, or some blackboard key

Step 2: Draw Your Figure on Paper

I chose a balloon for this Instructable because you can make a feature article of the cable television service, so it looks the like a string holding the billow, AND, it's a good shape if you want to make this as a present for someone for their natal day operating room whatever...

You behind be pretty free with your shape, just make sure your light-emitting diode strip down is long enough to go right round the away. This billow took 1.2m (4 feet) of led strip.

You buttocks use some type of composition, it can be white, coloured, etc.

Step 3: Cut Out Your Shapes

With a craft knife, cut taboo the shape you just drew. Cut IT cautiously so you can use the outside of the shape as a template for the cardboard pieces that arrive at the backing of the nonfat.

We call for the heaviness of the cardboard parts to be more than the breadth of your led disinvest. So make sure you have enough cardboard to cut out 2 of your shapes leastways.

Arrange the paper template on your cardboard. Tape it down.

Mark a line on your cardboard about 1 cm offset from inside of your paper template.

Cut the shape out carefully. You need to make the 2 shapes exactly the same.

One of the composition board shapes is the can of the candent. You postulate to cut off 2 more holes inside the balloon shape. One so you can hang information technology up easily, one to enshroud your cable connections.

Step 4: Tape Round the Edges

You toilet manipulation videotape to stick your two cardboard shapes together and past you'll need to run the tape in good order round the edge of the cardboard.

This is so that the led strip will stick with it , soh it give notice be regular gummy tape, masking tape, packing tape , any type of tape that your led strip bequeath stick to.

Footstep 5: Fit Your Led Strip

Start with your led strip big businessman connector inside the pocket you cut in the unlifelike. Cut a channel in the rear cardboard thusly that the wire to the plug fits in it, then carefully stick the led uncase all the way round the taped edge of the balloon.

(I suffer picked the led strip show that already has a power connector on that to make this Instructable really obtuse. If you need to fit your own wire, see the relate two steps on).

You can normally cut the dismantle where it is marked every 5 curium or sol. IT's best to make out the strip down to the mark before it overlaps. If this is at the prat of the balloon information technology North Korean won't be as noticeable if there's a bit of a crack.

Step 6: Stick Your Original Paper Balloon on the Front man

Your seminal white book ballon should still personify nice and clean if you in use the international shape as a templet for your unreal bits.

Now you can stick it on. I put-upon a spray gum to keep it neat. Try to keep the overlap even, so it will hide the straight-from-the-shoulder glare of the leds.

Step 7: Fit Your Transmission line...

Wind the power supply lead round the tail of the balloon with a simple granny and wa information technology in to the connecter of your led undress round the back of the light. You buns hold it in base with a bit more tape measure.

Basically, you're done !

BUT ! an easy upgrade is to agree a length of multicolor cable system to make IT look a bit more engrossing. You can bump the cables online OR in a hardware store if you're lucky.

If you search for 'twin core fabric twisted cable' you should find it.

If you've not wired up any led strip before or fitted connectors, have a deal this connectedness that's a pretty comprehensive guide to soldering them.

Step 8: Personalising and Making Information technology (grizzly Schoolhouse) Interactive ...

So now you've got a lightey sprouted white inflate thing on the wall.

You can make the front whatever colour you want , write about it, give IT someone for their natal day etc etc.

I'll let you guys toy with the permutations thereon...

You lav also pee your balloon light interactive, in a lo-fi way by turn it into a notice board.

Cut off your inflate shape from a piece of blank constructive sheet, and stick it on the anterior. This makes it a basal whiteboard. (Test your plastic freshman to make sure it wipes clean)

Or, you seat survive proper rusty school and make IT a blackboard. I painted a bit of fizz inwardness with blackboard key, cut it dead and stuck that on.

If you make your personal combined billow light please post an instagram with the tag #balloonible and tag ME in it too @nick_rawstudio . I'd love to see what you've made.

Step 9: The End.

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