Introduction: LED Flowers
Step 1: What's Needed:
1 - LED Tealight. (We bought these as a 3 pack at our dollar store, and the battery was included.)
Option: I had several different colored LEDs that I bought off of Ebay, so I used those,
but you can re-use the LED included with the Tealight.
1 - Silk Flower. (We bought these as a bouquet at our dollar store)
1 - Roll of Floral Tape. (We bought this at our dollar store as well)
1 - Sheet of 12" x 12" decorative paper. (This can be bought at most craft stores)
Option: Use cardboard tube from a paper towel roll. This can be cut down to whatever length you'd like and decorated.
1 - Piece of Tissue wrapping paper.
Tools:
Soldering Iron and solder
Wire cutters
Scissors
Tape
Step 2: The Vase:
After doing some trial and error, we finally came up with a fairly simple design for a vase.
To make the vase:
1) Take a 12" x 12" sheet of decorative paper, and cut it in half.
2) Use two of the led tealights to use as support, and roll the paper around them.
Note: do not wrap too tight - you will see why in a few minutes.
3) Make sure at least one end of the tube is straight.
We used the manufacture cut edge.
4) Tape or glue the end down. We chose tape because no drying required.
5) Once you have created your tube - remove the two led tealights.
We used a pencil to push them through.
Step 3: Prepare the Tealight
If you use the same tealight as picture in the bill of materials section:
Remove the led/flame by gently wiggling back and forth. We used a pair of small needlenose pliers, and the led/flame came right out. Cut the wires as close to the led as possible. If you are reusing the led then put it to the side for now.
Note: We did end up using a different brand of tealights. We actually had to remove the bottom of the tealight because the led was wired to a small circuit board. If you have this kind, then here is what we did. We removed the battery, and used two small flat head screwdrivers to remove the bottom We inserted one into the battery area to help lift the bottom up enough to get another on in on the edge, then we used the two screwdrivers together to work our way around to remove the bottom. You will find that there is a plastic peg that inserts into the cover, and that is all that is holding it together. We then cut the little board off, and reassembled the tealight with the wires through the hole.
Step 4: The Flower
Now take the wires and push them through the hole where the stem was at. You may need to open the flower petals to keep the wires from catching on the petals.
We first soldered the led to the wires, and then we test to see how to connect the wires to the tealight. We turned on the tealight, and then placed the wires from the led to the tealight to see which of the wires are the positive and negative leads. We turned the tealight back off, and then soldered them together.
The last thing we did for this part was to wrap the soldered area with black tape. This is to keep the wires from touching and shorting out.
Step 5: Wrapping the Flower
We used black tape to start the floral tape with, and then started wrapping the floral tape around the stem to hide the wires to the led. The flowers we used included a couple of leaves. You can leave them on or take them off. We left ours on, but it is a little bit tricky on wrapping the tape when you get to the leaves. When we got to the leaves, we wrapped just the led wires once, held that between two of the leaves against the stem, and started wrapping again.
When we finished wrapping down to the end of the stem, we used black tape to hold the floral tape in place.
Step 6: Finishing It Off
You are done. Turn it on, and turn off the lights for a real cool affect. The pictures do not do the flower justice. It was hard to get a decent picture in the dark. We tried these with red, white and yellow leds. We also used white and pink flowers. They all had a little bit different affect. Give it a try, they are a lot of fun, and pretty simple to make.