Introduction: Zelda Style Fairy in a Bottle
Need a quick pick me up? Low on hearts? Or maybe you just want to take on a Stalfos but are afraid to face the consequences. Well not anymore, because I'm gonna show you how to make your own life-saving fairy in a bottle. (Annoying sound effects not included)
Step 1: Materials
First things first, let's run over the dirty details. Here's what you'll need.
Glass Jar/Vase - $1 (I bought mine at the Dollar Tree. Any glass jar/vase with a big enough opening will do, just a matter of taste. My jars are 7" tall, and the top of the flare out lid is 3 3/8" for reference)
2" StyroFoam Spheres - $3-$5 for 12 (Find them at any craft store; Hobby Lobby, Michaels, JoAnn's, etc. I've even seen them at Walmart)
Any type of thin plastic sheeting (I used a clear plastic school folder I found at walmart for $1. Nothing TOO flimsy though, it needs to be able to stab into the styrofoam)
Thin Sheet of Cork (I found a 4 pack of 12x12" cork sheets at Walmart for $6)
A 2-Pin On/Off Switch $1-$5 (Find them at radioshack, Home Depot/Lowes, or Amazon -Amazon Link
A 5mm 2 prong LED of your color choice (I highly recommend this- Led Set LEDs
A 3V Lithium CR2032 Battery (I found a 9 pack at Ace Hardware for $3)
A small sheet/block of Styrofoam - I got a 1"(Thickness) x 6"(Width) x 11"(Length) for around $3 at JoAnn's)
Super Glue, or Preferably glue sticks if you have a hot glue gun - a few $
Copper Wire, or really light gauge (22 or higher) electrical wire. (I actually used twist ties on my first build, so if you have those that may work as well)
B-Connectors or "Beanies" < $10 (OPTIONAL, but definitely makes the job easier) Amazon (Home Depot/Lowes)
Electrical Tape (May not be required, skip down to the cork section to see. You may have something else that will work)
Step 2: Tools
Drill and 1/4"bit (Optional, just makes things easier)
Wire Cutters (You COULD get away with using a knife or scissors, but these will make life much easier for you)
Hot Glue Gun (OPTIONAL, like I said earlier super glue will work as well, but hot glue is much easier to work with)
Scissors/Exacto Knife/Utility Blade (Any of these will suffice. NOTE: For cutting the foam, scissors will not work. Well, at least not well. For this use a sharp knife, or one of the other recommended tools)
A soft tip marker (Sharpie, Highlighter, Dry Erase, etc)
Step 3: The Fairy
The first thing we want to do is build the fairy. Grab one of the 2" spheres, and drill/poke/carve out a hole just big enough for your LED to fit into. Try to make it deep enough that the LED sits near the middle of the foam(For now). If you have a drill, a 1/4" bit is perfect. (IMG 1 AND 2) Otherwise, you can use a pencil/dremel/phillips head screwdriver, etc to make the hole. Don’t put the LED in yet, we’re just prepping for later.
After this, make the wings. There are two options here. You can either freehand the wings, which is what I did, or I'll show you how to make them easier if you can't draw well. If you can free hand, just simply draw the wings onto the plastic sheet/folder/whatever you have and then cut them out. A little hint though: at the end of the wings that will connect to the body, make them a little longer and POINTED. This is because we are going to stick the wing into the foam ball, so account for this extra half inch when cutting.
Now if you can't draw then here's what you do. Find a good picture of Navi in which both wings are facing towards you. This is the best example :
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/102/9/1/navi_lineart_by_stealthelfjade-d7e4crw.jpg
Now save and open the picture in any editing program. Now, here's the clever part. Hold the foam sphere up to the screen. Adjust the size of the image until the size of navi is the same size as the sphere. (IMG 3) Now, you may need to make the image smaller than the sphere as the wings could be a little too long for the jar. You most likely want the body of Navi to be about 50-60% of the size of the sphere. This should make the wings the right size. Now hold a piece of paper up to the image, and using a soft marker with light pressure, trace the wings. (IMG 4) After tracing, cut out the wings. Using these wings as a template, trace the wings onto the plastic. (IMG 5) Like I said before, add an extra half inch to the part of the wings that connect to the body, ending in a point. Cut out all four of the wings, then attach them to the body by sticking the pointy end of the plastic into the styrofoam. Remember, the top of the sphere with the hole in it is the top of our fairy, so keep that in mind. It may take a few tries to get the positioning right, luckily it’s as easy as pulling them out and trying again. (IMG 6) After you have the positioning right, you can either add hot glue, or super glue to make them more sturdy, but you don’t have to.
Step 4: The Lid
The next step is making the lid. Now, IF you can find a cork big enough for your jar then by all means do it. I however could not, and I looked everywhere. So, I made my own.
Measure how big the “cork” needs to be. An easy way is to find something the right size. Try rolls of tape, coasters, bottle caps, etc. Just anything circular, until you find something that is the size that your lid needs to be. (IMG 1) I actually used a 3” hole saw, so if you have one of those, it should be perfect. Once you find the right size template, trace it onto the styrofoam sheet. (IMG 2) Do the same onto the cork sheet. You can make two of these if you’d like, one for the top of the foam, and one for the bottom, but the top is the only important one. We’re basically making a fake cork. Using an exacto knife/utility blade/sharp knife/hole saw, cut out the holes that you just traced. (IMG 3)
Now, using a hot glue gun or super glue, glue the cork to the foam. After it dries, take some electrical tape and wrap it around the edges of the foam a few times to hide the white foam. You could also use any type of colored tape, or even paint the foam a color similar to cork, whatever your preference, the goal is just to hide the foam. (IMG 4) My cork was actually too tall the first time I made mine, so I cut it in half, and now I have two ½ inch tall corks.
After all that is settled, we need to make a hole for the switch. What I did was trace the outside of my switch onto the cork top preferably with something easy to remove or that isn't super visible. (IMG 5) Once you have your guidelines, find whatever you are going to use to cut the hole. This part could be difficult if you don't have a drill, or at least a utility blade. We want to make the hole slightly smaller than our outline, and we want to cut all the way through to the other side. I used a very tiny drill bit and made holes just inside the outline all the way around, very close together. After this, I took a blade and was able to easily remove the square section. (IMG 6)
After this, stick the switch in the hole. If you sized it right, the switch should go in easily but not all the way through. The actual switch should sit perfectly on top of the cork.(IMG 7)
Now, if you didn't size it right, don't worry, I made this mistake once too. My switch was too small for the hole and didn't sit right on top. What I did was took some small pieces of paper (folded) and pried them inside the hole between the switch and the cork/foam. This held the switch in the correct position.
After the switch is in place, take your hot glue gun and glue around the edges to secure it to the top. (IMG 9)
Now set the top to the side for now.
Step 5: Electrical Fun
I'm going to assume that you've never worked with LEDs before. If you have, just skip this short intro.
Take a look at your LED. You should see that one of the prongs is longer than the other. This longer stem, is the POSITIVE lead. The shorter one is the negative. That's basically all you need to know for this project.
Now let's test your LED. Hopefully, you purchased the pack I recommended, so you'll have plenty of choices here. Pick which color you'd like to try, then take your cr2032 battery and stick it between the two prongs. The smooth side of the battery is positive, so make sure that side is touching the longer stem. The LED should light up. (IMG 1)
Now to check what your fairy is gonna look like illuminated, stick the LED into the hole we made earlier and do the same thing we just did. (IMG 2) If you're wondering how I got pink, the LED I used is actually red, but looks pink when shining through the foam) If you're content with the color choice, let's move on to the more complicated part of the project.
Take your LED, and attach a B-Connector to each prong. If you look inside the B-Connector, there is a tighter side and a more open side. We want the tighter side to go onto the LED prongs. You may have to open it up a little by squeezing the side with wire cutters or pliers. Use something to mark which side is positive on the connector, so you don't get confused later. Now using wire cutters, or pliers, crimp down on the b-connector until it is firmly squeezed onto the leads. Give each a slight tug to test their strength. If they come loose easy, retry until they are firm. Now you should have something like this.(IMG 3)
Take your drill, or whatever you used to make the hole for the LED earlier and make the hole wider. We want the LED and the B-connectors to sit all the way into the ball, so make the hole just big enough for that, but no bigger. Afterwards it should look like this.(IMG 4) Now take the LED back out for now and set it to the side.
Now, we need to cut some wire. If you don’t have any plain copper wire (I didn’t) you’ll need to improvise. My first build, I used two long twist ties and used wire strippers to remove the plastic from the wire underneath. This worked surprisingly well. My next build, I used some 22 Gauge wire, and used strippers to remove the plastic from the copper underneath. The thin copper wire is far less noticeable than it is with the plastic still on it. The wire will be both supporting the fairy, and running power to the LED.
To determine how long the wire should be, hold your fairy up to the bottle and decide where you want it to “sit” in the bottle. Once you’ve decided, imagine that the wire is running from the top of the ball to the switch in the cork. This is how long of a wire you need. Cut about an extra inch or 2 to give you some breathing room for error.
Now let’s connect the wire to the LED. Stick each wire into one of the b-connectors. Then, same as before crimp the connectors until they are tight on the wire. (IMG 5)
Now let’s test that the connection is still strong. Take your battery, and the same as with the LED before, hold the battery between the two wires to send power down the wire to the LED. Hopefully you marked which side was positive earlier, making this even easier. If you didn’t, no big deal, just turn the battery around if it doesn’t work at first. Make sure that the two wires running from the LED are not touching at any point, this could also cause it to not work. If for some reason you can’t get it to light, then your connection must not be solid enough. Just open the connector back up with some pliers or wire cutters, and redo it until the connection is strong. (IMG 6)
OPTIONAL : Before gluing the LED in place, I took a tiny drill bit and drilled a bunch of tiny holes throughout the ball into the center. What this does is help to disperse the light a little more evenly. This isn’t necessary, and doesn’t make a HUGE difference, but does make a cool little effect.
Once you have a solid connection, stick the LED into the hole until the connectors are flush with the ball. Now, hot glue this to the ball to make it more solid. This isn’t necessary, but if you don’t the LED could fall out at some point or come loose.
Now let’s make a spot for the battery. I took my utility blade, and cut a small slit and then pushed the battery inside. (I taped the bottom of the lid earlier in case you’re wondering, just preference.) Put the positive side closest to the switch. Run a small piece of wire from the positive side of the battery, to the the prong on the switch closest to it. (IMG 7)
Now onto wiring the switch. First, a quick rundown on how the switch works. All a switch basically is, is a “link” in the chain. When the switch is “ON”, the link is complete. When the switch is “OFF” the link is broken and no electricity can get through. The positive wire from the LED is going to run to one prong of the switch, and the other prong of the switch is going to run to the positive side of the battery. When the switch is switched “ON” the circuit is complete and the positive juice goes through the switch uninterrupted and into the LED. When the switch is “OFF” the circuit is broken, and the charge does not make it to the LED. This is a quick diagram of how the switch will be wired. (IMG 8)
So we need to run a wire from the positive end of the LED (hopefully you marked it) to the other unused prong of the switch. Now take the negative wire from the LED and run it to the negative side of the battery. I simply stuck the wire into the foam and pried it against the battery. This is by far the hardest part of the project, so don’t get discouraged if it takes you a few tries. Once you’re done you should have something like this. (IMG 9)
Test the switch and connection by hitting the switch a few times. If all is good, then all that’s left is to put the top and fairy in the jar. Turn the wings sidewise as their going in. Move the lid around until you find a good position for the fairy.
Step 6: Finished!
And we're done! Congratulations, you now have a new life insurance policy, courtesy of Hyrule Mutual.
As long as everything is firm in place, this should last you a very long time. A single LED will run 24/7 for weeks to MONTHS on a 3v battery in the tests I've done. So if you're conservative and only use it an hour or so a day, this should last you for years.
And thanks to everyone here from Reddit who showed so much interest.
DISCLAIMER:
Fake fairies that you create with this guide will not actually save you from physical harm.
Hyrule Mutual does not take any responsibility for foolish acts of self disregard.
Stay safe, and go in peace.
Step 7: Additional Help
If you need any other help, here's an album of all the photos I took. A lot of which aren't on here. Maybe these will help.