| I want to tell a little story about this method. I had aquired a couple of sheets of styrofoam insulation and decided to try to make a decoration out of them. I spent a good deal of time cutting and shaping the styrofoam into what I thought was a killer decoration.I then spent a good deal of time placing the lites ON it. Thinking I had a good thing going I plugged the lites in and took a look. It looked terrible! I mean Really BAD!! I was so mad and frustrated with all the time I spent on it that I took one of the midget lites and slammed it into the styrofoam. To my shock and amazment the styrofoam GLOWED where I had "inserted" the midget lite!!!!! YAHOO !! I just discovered a killer method to make a decoration. End of story. |
| This method has so much potential just limited by your imagination and very easy to create! A great family project ! |
| Materials Styrofoam 2'x8'x2"sheet wood glue 3/8" wood dowel midget lites |
| Tools saber saw serrated knife vacume cleaner |
| Decide what you want to make and draw the pattern onto the styrofoam. If you are making something larger than the styrofoam sheet just glue another sheet or piece together. Simply take your saw or knife and cut the pattern out! don't worry if you break a piece (as you mite) just glue it back together! Start poking your midget lites in and you are done! Be carefull! If you have to remove a lite, wiggle it as you remove it as the styrofoam likes to "EAT" those little bulbs !! As an example I made an 8' candy cane for the Land Lubbers Parade last year. I needed to add another piece of styrofoam up on top to make the hook on the candy cane. I took some wood glue and inserted some dowels into the styrofoam and glued the two pieces together. The midget lites I used were the multi colored and it looked pretty good ! If you wanted to make a window decoration for your house you could use the 1 inch thick styrofoam instead of the 2 inch stuff. |
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| Here is an example of what you can do with styrofoam. The snowflake is 8 feet tall and 7 feet wide; built on the chicken wire frame (unlit in this photo) so that it can be seen from either side. I used 500 blue midget lites on it. It was made out of 1 and 1/2 sheets of 1 inch styrofoam I don't recommend using blue lites in the syrofoam as they don't show up very well unless it is Really dark. |
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| Here it is lit up. The picture doesn't do it justice but an 8 foot snowflake looks pretty cool !! |