Solar garden lamp based pendant

Our early teen model, showing off her solar garden lamp based night light pendant ! These look very attractive and scope exists for kids to make a batch & sell them as "fashionable solar lamps" etc. A small profit could even be made -folks seem happy to pay ~$5 here here in NZ, especially if they could select their own ribbon from a range available!

Note: If you don't feel up to the full pendant conversion perhaps just consider the simpler  Solar Easter Egg  Instructable => http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Easter-Egg/

Step 1:

Solar Garden Lamps (SGL) are globally available at approx US$2 each, but often are pretty clunky or missing a switch. These new types were compact, full featured & very attractive.

Comments

[manuka]

The Olympic fever buildup made these lamps popular for solar torches. A local pre-teen scout group came up with all sorts of after dark "son et lumiere" effects.

However a recent fast track craft approach involves just using the unmodified top as a "mood lamp" base.The black lamp tends to be best for this, as the coloured ones show slight light bleeding through the cover which somewhat detracts from the effect.

All manner of translucent items can be safely placed on the LED to good effect - the local NZ "Kina" (sea egg) being particularly lovely. A simple empty egg shell (blown out with a straw & yolk saved) looks absolutely fantastic! Kids can suitably decorate it, & there's an endless supply of them in most homes. There's not much you can do with empty egg shells normally of course.

[manuka]

A bendy straw readily blows out the contents of a hens egg, & the yolk & white can be saved for normal kitchen use- or give it to your cat/dog if worried about hygiene! Egg shells are naturally rather fragile however, so when placed on the lamp care will be needed.

[Cbirbeck]

Hi, realise its a while now since you posted this, but they look fab, want o have a go, do you know If it's poss to buy these lamps over the Internet? thanks

[manuka]

The lamps still abound here in NZ in our country wide " WareHouse" chain. Where are you based? Stan.

[manuka]

This time it's ~9yo's at a South Auckland school. Time was a little tight here so we bypassed the hole drilling & largely went for "illuminations".

[manuka]

Here's a crowd of Kiwi 12-13 yo's with their  "11/11/11"  pendant creations !

[manuka]

Further steps added & technical details moved to the project end.

[javajunkie1976]

Great idea! Dimtick is right, this is perfect for Halloween! I volunteer at a rabbit shelter and if I can find a way to incorporate this into a rabbit silouhette, this would be a perfect, green item to sell.

[dimtick]

what a cool project. perfect for Halloween.
couldn't really follow a lot of the pictures but i think i get the basic idea.
nice job!

[enatti]

Awesome idea! I'm off to the w house to buy and try. Cheers!

[scoochmaroo]

What a fun project to get kids into hacking!