Paper LED Lamps for About $1.50

Turns out I have been making lamps for years. I've finally got the process down the minimum.

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE:

These lamps take advantage of the new style LED bulbs in 2 ways: the low wattage, and the lack of heat generated.

DO NOT USE A REGULAR INCANDESCENT BULB in this lamp They get very hot and also use too much power for the nice thin wire I use. .

Actually, the old incandescent are really getting hard to find anyway. this should be no big deal.

The thin wiring and paper lamp I use is limited to 110v 15w which is perfect for LED bulbs.

I only had to buy the night light for $1 and the builbs, both from the $1 store. total cost: $1.50. If you need the plug, you can buy the extension cord from the $1 store and use it (and the wire!) for another $1.00

Supplies used:

A dremel with cutting blade

A drill

A soldering iron (sorry, you do have do some soldering.)

Hot glue gun

Hair dryer/Heat gun

White PVA Glue (elmers or such)

Crazy glue (acelalamainablabla glue, available at the $1 store)

Electrical tape (I like white tape )

Cardstock paper (65lb paper to print the lamp)

see the pictures.

Its only a little bit, look for a tutorial on youtube, this is one of the easiest soldering situations you will ever do. What you are doing is stripping the wire ends, tinning the wire and copper lead. Don't get the solder in the spring section if you want to use the on/off switch of the night light.

use a clamp to hold the night light steady so you have a free hand to hold the solder and iron in each hand!

Hot glue gun, and a piece of the plastic you cut off

22 gauge white wire to match the wall, twisting makes it look nice.

this is an application of paper modeling. google "paper models" and see how it works. I've included the templates for 2 of the lamps shown in this instructable, They are printed on 65lb cardstock and are a pretty straight forward assembly. The cylinder lamp is a bit narrow and I used a 1 1/4" pvc pipe section to screw in the bulf. (wedge the bulb into the pipe reach in and screw in the bulb. A little shake and the pvc pipe section disconnects. )

1/2" strip back on the wires, twist one 15' wire to the nightlight lead, wrap with the electrical tape, repeat with the other wire. Then wrap the whole thing to make it neat.

Repeat similarly fro the plug end. Optionally you can put a click on/click off swtich in the middle if desired. If you look carefully, for the cylinder lamp, I had the wire from some old appliance that had the switch inline, so I used that.

Its doubtful the lamp will be level. re-center the wire with hot glue, and find tune by gluing pennies to the top to level it.

the cylinder lamp looked great with the night light on top. The parchment lamp wasn't so clean. Lets make a cover for the ugliness out of paper.

I don't bother with the in-line on-off switches much anymore as I buy the Alexa plug in modules to turn the lamps on and off. But they look great,