Luxury Ant Farm: The mANTsion

Step 8 Ground cherry husk light

To make the light I found a ground cherry husk and wired an LED inside of it. It already looked like a lamp shade of sorts and had some really nice coloring on it, so I thought that it would make a nice warm glow with an LED inside of it.

First I dipped the ground cherry in water based polyurethane several times to keep it from drying out and to give it some strength so it wouldn't be so brittle. Then, I cut the front and back of the ground cherry using some sharp scissors to make a hole big enough to pass a wire and an LED through.

I used a 9V battery to power the 2.4V red LED and wired in two resistors to equal 330 ohms in order to protect the LED form burning out. See LEDs for beginners for more information about how to wire up and LED.

Once the LED was lit it looked a little too bright for the ground cherry, so I wrapped it up in several layers of saran wrap to diffuse the light. Randofo recommends using a plastic bag from the store to do this as well. Both methods seem to work well.

I then carefully threaded the LED and the wire into the ground cherry and put a dab of hot glue on the back of the ground cherry where it met the wire and on the wires inside the ant farm to hold the whole thing in place.