BOO!! Happy Halloween Everybody!! 🎃
I’m excited to share my craziest project to date: My Snali Halloween mini-lamp!!
…well, it isn’t suuuper crazy; it’s just a mini standee with a LED 😝 But I hyper focused on this project like crazy and it took a lot of studying and different materials to do, so it was definitely my most advanced project to date!
Originally I was planning on making these for selling, and I do have more materials on hand to make more… But I eventually decided that it would be too stressful worrying about selling them and decided to enjoy making it for the sake of the challenge.
They’re still planned out as merchandise tho; they’re powered by a replaceable 2032 coin battery, the standee and the base can be disconnected for easiness of shipping and all the electric connections are inside of the base.
They’re built in 4 different parts:
• Printed and laser cut plywood witch Snali, sourced from Zap Creatives as usual;
• 4 layers of frosted orange acrylic, laser cut and engraved to make the Pumpkin, cut at the awesome Maker Bean cafe;
• Currently-4-but-as-many-layers-as-I-need of opaque orange acrylic for the base;
• Small 2032 breakout with switch and mini warm white led, all inside the base.
Kinda wish I took more pics of the process….
The end result isn’t exactly what I imagined, but I love how it came out and I’m really glad I embarked on this journey! I’ve learnt about a lot of things I’ve always wanted to play with – circuitry, leds, laser cutting… Ever since I was a kid I’ve spent hours planning crazy thingmajigs and researching about things I’ve never put to practice, so it feels really good to get something done – even if kinda simple, it got finished, and that’s awesome!
That said, there’s several things I want to experiment with. Now’s the part where I start rambling, so feel free to skip all of this and jump to the end:
– While researching how to make the battery last longer (right now I estimate it’ll last around 10 hours, which is a bit too little) I came across pulsing LEDs circuits, and now I’m absolutely in love with the idea. It’ll look even more spoopy!!
– I also want to try using 2 leds instead of just one and flashing them through the frosted standee legs. Right now they’re installed in a hole in the middle of the top of the standee, but from my tests shining them directly into the frosted acrylic helps make the light more diffuse and travel more evenly. That would require insert holes for the LEDs in the standee legs, and that’s an experiment of it’s own – I didn’t quite get the measurements right and the standee doesn’t perfectly fit the base so that needs fixing too (i had to shave it a bit – oops!)
– And last, I’m not sure how doable this is, but I’d like if the frosted acrylic was a biiit more frosted. I remediated the big transparency by adding an extra layer between Snali and the front pumpkin, but I think it’ll look more diffuse and glowy if it’s more frosted…… I’m not sure. I can try sanding and buffing it, but I don’t know if it’s worth the effort. It’s a good experiment tho, I’d learn a lot from it!
(but i hate sandiiiiing)
Phew! With that out of the way, here’s some more pictures of this cutie in action:
…to be hoooonest this is a bit closer to how much you can see Snalis face when the lights are off lol – I’m fooling y’all with the other pictures : x
Right now I don’t have plans for selling them, I think to be worth the time and materials I’d have to price it at 30$ and I’d need a minimum of 10 orders to justify ordering more pieces… But if you’re interested in it let me know in the comments, with enough interest I can make it work or plan a new mini-lamp! ✨
Also, I do have a little Halloween themed thing in my shop: The Spoopy Snali wooden pin! Please check it out:
[beautiful_link_preview layout=”compact” url=”https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/889478071/halloween-spoopy-snali-jack-o-lantern”]
Well, that’s it! This little project was a lot of work – I’ve been working on it for over a month – but I’m really glad I completed it. I plan on experimenting on it a bit more in the future, so this isn’t the last you’ve seen of it ♥
Thank you for reading this far, and have a Happy Halloween everyone!!