Rainbow Light Filter Prank

I had a brainwave when my elder sister gave me a portable lamp made from a mason jar with a battery pack fairy light and some shimmery string. I wanted to dim the glaring light so I used some crepe paper I had lying around and to my delight, the purple paper cast a lovely glow, creating a light filter.

So I begin to think of all the different things I could do with that, and one of them was this! I have plans to set this up one night and spring this on my family in the morning when everybody wakes up. Perhaps on April Fool's Day or on someone's birthday... Maybe for Pride? Either ways, It will be a pleasant surprise, possibly irritating, might mess with the women's make-up routine and will definitely piss someone off and cause some noise, but that's the whole point of a prank right! Harmless fun!.... More of a mild interlude....

Anyway, use it on your family, use it on your friends. Why not do it to your co-worker in the office and watch their reaction? Give it a try. It's easy to set up. Have fun!!!

1. Crepe paper (I find it provides the base shade for color without letting too much light through, if you have colored masking tape, you can use that too)

2. Tape (something to stick the crepe together and to stick your filter to things)

3. Various lights and lamps

- for my mason jar lamp, it is just a mason jar with a led string light and battery pack

That's all!!!

Measure your light fixture and depending on how you are gonna place your color stripes, figure out how much material you will need to accommodate all the colors.

Tip: After experimenting with different placement, the method that casts the most distinct colors is to place your stripes vertically around your lamp shade, side by side. But light fixtures come in all shapes and sizes, so experiment with different placement for yours.

After you have decides your placement, CAREFULLY adhere your stripes to the lamp shade making sure that you have covered all the holes where the light from the bulb could shine through. The white light will interfere with the colors cast.

In my mason jar, I've also placed the stripes vertical.

After experimenting with the stripes of crepe paper, this is from my living room ceiling lamp with stripes place in vertical. I'm absolutely happy with the effect; the colors are very distinct and the white ceiling made a great canvas.

Mind you I had to be very quiet doing this at 2am in the morning;D

Thank god there is only 1 light fixture in each room and my family members did not care to get smaller stand-alones, so these are the ones in my house. There is still a lot for there is 2 in the kitchen alone, plus another 2 bathrooms, a living room, 3 bedrooms, one in the storeroom and one in the hallway.

If you have a humongous house or you are doing this large scale, get some extra hands and do the prep before installation.

This is one of my trials where I connected 3 colors into 1 long strip and wounded it around horizontally. The rainbow light dispersion is not as distinctive. You can see though the effect is interesting. There are shadows? in different color cast onto the ceiling like a color separation. Not the effect I was going for, but nonetheless interesting. Also, the same wrapping method does not work with every light fixture the same way; I have a flat ceiling light that I'm still figuring out. It just doesn't cast the colors well. Maybe I can do something else with it, hmmm...

Anyway, this is not a fool proof method and it does not work with all of my light fixtures, only the ones that are not flat, though I expect a lot of light fixtures in houses are flat on the ceiling. I am still experimenting myself so if you have a better idea let me know.