Filter Paper LIGHT - Art Sculpture

I have always been fascinated with handmade lighting, especially if it involves paper. You may recall the blue paper flower with LED lights I made a while ago, or the various vellum paper lanterns I made for myself and for my friend Belinda.

Anyway, this lighting project is a bit different. I still used LED string lights to light it all up, but instead of card stock paper, vellum or tissue papers, I used coffee filter paper.

Coffee filters are cheap, wonderfully fluffy, pliable, half-opaque, half-translucent and best of all, light.

They do not weigh the finished piece down. For an amateur handy-person like myself, and I cannot stress the word "amateur" enough, hanging this paper/light sculpture on the wall was easy breezy. I hammered a couple of nails and hanged the piece using a bit of wire. Much easier (and lighter) than hanging massive pictures, or posters.

TUTORIAL
Here are the steps for making it.

Materials:

• LED string lights (mine are from IKEA)
• Coffee filters (about 200)
• 1 art canvas 14"x14"
• Some string or sewing thread
• Glue gun, and 
• Wire.

Directions:

1. Arrange the lights on the canvas and sew them in place.


2. Fold a coffee filter like in the pictures and glue it on the canvas, careful not to touch the lights. Do this with 150-200 coffee filters and see if you need any more to cover the holes (if any).


3. Add wire at the back of the canvas and hang on the wall.

Here are some more pictures of the finished piece, currently hanging on our dining room wall.

Autumn Sun Through Vellum

Want simple lighting decorations for a casual party?

You'll need about 4 things:

1. vellum paper
2. a few glass jars lids
3. double sided tape
4. battery-operated LED tea lights

Cut out the paper as needed to wrap it around the lid, then use double sided tape to secure it and drop one LED tea light in each lamp.

These look lovely when lit up, and especially lovely on a sunny afternoon.

You can see more of my vellum light decorations here and here.

Sculpted paper flowers as LED tea light holders

I posted a picture of a few paper flower LED light holders some time in December, and just wanted to share this version of the paper flowers doubling as tea light holders, too.

These are made from red paper, cut and folded by hand, then glued together to form a flower bulb.

The little LED tealights could last forever. I've had these since my wedding in September 2009.

And when the battery eventually dies, it can be recharged or replaced with a new one. Brilliant!

Green LED Paper Flowers - Wedding Centerpieces

Some time ago I made a paper flower that glows in the dark with the light of 10 LED lights. I still keep it in my home - nothing better than some blue light on a winter night - makes everything more wintery :)

This time, I made 10 paper flowers with 20 LEDs in several shades of green - not just because I like to dabble in green, but because there's a creative March wedding in the works - a great event I'm happy to be a part of.

Anyways, these paper flowers, along with my favorite wall flowers will be the star decorations at the reception. They look pretty as they are, but especially enchanting when lit up.

I'm sending these babies to my friend Belinda, and come March, I'll post a few photos from the wedding, too.

Blue LED Light Flower

I've been experimenting with some LED lights I got from IKEA and some 5-petal flowers I made from baby blue card stock, and the results can be seen in the following images.



The LED lights are battery operated with 10 white lights in a row. I glued 2 5-petal leaf flowers and then poked 10 little holes for the lights. Once they are lit, the glare of the LEDs is pretty sharp, so to diffuse it I used white tissue paper curled up in the shape of an abstract rose and glued to the smaller of the two flowers.






You can see how sort of eary they look in the dark. I think I'll create a few more just to see how they would look scattered about the room.