"Godzilla" the Giant Sparkleball

Step 4 The lights - How to install

This is the most time consuming task of the entire process. Take your light string out of its packaging, and gently stretch it out so the wires are pulled taut. This is like you in the morning, needing to get all the kinks out.

Number 1, most important!  Plug your lights in, make sure they work. It is no fun to be all done with your light ball, only to find you installed a faulty light string.

Start at the prong (plug) end of the cord. Insert the light(s) closest to the prong into a cup on the outside rim. (The plug will then hang out when you put the two halves together.)

Put one, two or three (depending on your final preferred outcome) lights in each cup. Work your way around the ball half, zigzaging from outer cups to inner cups and back. You want to end up on the outer rim, at the cup next to one you started with.

Now, if you want to make your ball a bit more professional, is the time to use the hot glue gun. One thing that drove me crazy when I started making these, would be the lights falling back into the inside of the ball as I worked on it. Or worse yet, after all done, and I have 'welded' the two halves together, to find holes with no lights in them. So now, as I put the light(s) into their holes, I put a small dollop of hot glue on the socket of the light where it comes through the hole in the cup. This keeps the light where you want it!

***BEWARE*** Hot glue guns are just that   HOT GLUE GUNS!!
They will burn your fingers, and since its glue, it sticks to you, and continues to burn. Be careful.

Experiment with how you install you lights, you can put them in so they flash in sections, or whole half's at a time. Or you can mix them around, so that the sparkleball has no pattern to the lights as they flash.