Dollar Store Glowing Eye
by monterreymachito in Living > Halloween
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Dollar Store Glowing Eye
Halloween, a great time to explore your creativity. The Dollar Store is a wonderful adjunct to support your Halloween projects, affordable and troves of opportunities to create something new that is affordable.
In this instructable I'm going to show you how to build a glowing eyeball using components found at the dollar store.
In addition I'm going to show how to disassemble a malfunctioning tealight for reuse.
created using instructables for android
editied on a PC, sadly can't do all that I want with the droid platform at this time
In this instructable I'm going to show you how to build a glowing eyeball using components found at the dollar store.
In addition I'm going to show how to disassemble a malfunctioning tealight for reuse.
created using instructables for android
editied on a PC, sadly can't do all that I want with the droid platform at this time
Materials
Bag of Halloween zombie eyeballs
Package of tea lights
Nice to have:
Thermal Adhesive Extruder A.K.A Hot Glue Gun
Electrical tape
Package of tea lights
Nice to have:
Thermal Adhesive Extruder A.K.A Hot Glue Gun
Electrical tape
Tools
Drill motor
1/2 inch drill bit
a means to clamp the eyeball when drilling
1/2 inch drill bit
a means to clamp the eyeball when drilling
Assembly
mark the eye where you want to drill the hole
clamp the eye
drill the hole
insert the tea light into the opening
VOILA!
clamp the eye
drill the hole
insert the tea light into the opening
VOILA!
Completed Dollar Store Glowing Eye
Repurpose a Malfunctioning Tea Light to Make a Glowing Eye Without a Base
Those tea lights are really cheap and that's evident in the build quality.
The switch is the mechanism most prone to failure. I guarantee a good amount of the tea lights purchased (for me 20%)will require some tinkering.
Sometimes you just can't make the switch work properly however don't despair, repurpose the tea light.
The LED in the tea light is fully self contained, no current limiting resistor needed, no additional circuitry needed, just hook it up to a 3 volt power supply.
Look at the following images to assist with disassembly of the tea light.
All you need to do is wrap the LED contacts around the battery using electrical tape (white works best) and you have a long lasting (120 hours) flickering LED that fits perfectly inside of a zombie eyeball.
If you have trouble making good contact with electrical tape alone you can add a small piece of aluminum foil to the contact area.
The switch is the mechanism most prone to failure. I guarantee a good amount of the tea lights purchased (for me 20%)will require some tinkering.
Sometimes you just can't make the switch work properly however don't despair, repurpose the tea light.
The LED in the tea light is fully self contained, no current limiting resistor needed, no additional circuitry needed, just hook it up to a 3 volt power supply.
Look at the following images to assist with disassembly of the tea light.
All you need to do is wrap the LED contacts around the battery using electrical tape (white works best) and you have a long lasting (120 hours) flickering LED that fits perfectly inside of a zombie eyeball.
If you have trouble making good contact with electrical tape alone you can add a small piece of aluminum foil to the contact area.