EL Wire Plant Lamp

While living away from home, I get a little homesick now and then. My first thought was to steal a little bit of home from the internet and paste it on my wall, then after a little more thought, I realised that a silhouette outline on my wall would be far more appealing and slick looking. Over the weekend I realised using a little EL wire could really make this wall art come to life and make an impact day or night. In fact, using a very simple construction method means that I could replace any of the colours very easily. Also any number of EL wire colours could be attached to suit any mood you may be in.

These steps will show you how to source and manipulate images from online, cut the silhouette, install the EL wire and mount the design on your wall.  

Step 1 Image Manipulation

The first step is to organise what your silhouette will be. I have chosen a New Zealand flax which I am fond of. You may choose anything really, it is up to you. Go online and find any images above about 300x300 pixels. The resolution is not important as we will be cutting and pasting alot and in the end, actually cutting the silhouette out of card.
Try to find images that have a distinct background so the silhouette is easily distinguished. Once images have been sourced open up in a image manipulation software. I will describe Photoshop functions here, but these are simple and will be achievable in other software.

Use the replace colour function to replace dominant background colours. The notes on the images should explain the Photoshop functions. Alternatively just magic wand or lasso the image onto a new sheet. Open a new sheet and make this roughly the size you want the overall silhouette to be. In my case, I want it to be large - like 1500 x 1000mm wide, stretch up to the size you want on the page. I want to have some flax leaves at the bottom, so I have found some that I like and I have lassoed and cut them onto a new sheet.

Once the colour images are on the sheet use the 'curves' function and stretch the curve to the upper left hand side. This will saturate the image totally black. There are many other ways to do this, so feel free to experiment or do it your own way.

Comments

[XKohen]

This is very nice. But i am curious about which el-wire you used. Is it 2mm or 4 or 5mm?

[Kaelessin]

Wow that effect is really neat (i love the yellowish green)! Is it possible (I'm assuming so since it's just wires) to slowly fade from one color to the next? It'd be kinda cool to have it shift ever so slowly from yellow to green and back.

[Bernyk]

thats awesome! i love it!

[franklande]

Very nice, good!

[irish03]

what are you powering yours with?

[ke!!y]

Adding the EL wire is a really nice element! We make silhouettes now using heavy black foamcore board and vinyl. The EL wire will be a great addition - thanks.

[NostalgicStone]

Thats beautiful, I love it!

[ChrysN]

Nice wall art!