Introduction: Sunflower Wall Sconce Made of Popsicle Sticks

About: An artist by birth, a software architect by choice, a lamp maker by passion, a learner forever. Featured Author here:)

Dear Instructables Fellows,

There is something about lighted objects, whenever I make one I feel a strange satisfaction :).

I was searching on the internet to find ways for bending playwood, somehow the search did not go well but in this course I found some bracelets made by bending popsicle sticks. Probably the keyword bend hit those pages. I liked the way those sticks look when bended and some people have made really cool bracelets using them.

Well we will not make any bracelets in this ible, you can find many here on instructables. When I had seen those bracelets I really liked the idea of bending those sticks and I knew I can make something else using it, so I bought popsicle sticks, did some work and came out with this beautiful looking wall sconce which I called Sunflower Wall Sconce (my best friend complimented me seeing my work and gave this name).

Honestly this is more like an Idea where I see many possibilities. I am sure you must have seen many craft work using popscile sticks but only a few using curved ones. I will share these ideas in final step.

Lets get started, it is really easy to make.  If you like it, please vote, I would really appreciate that.

Step 1: You Will Need

To make this sconce, all you need is these items (Please refer to image above for some items):
  1. An inner embriodery ring , any size of your choice.
  2. Popsicle sticks, depending on the size of your ring, you may need 50 or 100 or more. If you notice the image above, the sticks are not very broad but thin. Therefore for the ring I chose I used about 70 sticks. Honestly you have to make a judgement about the numbers.
  3. White glue like Fevicol or Elmers
  4. Double Sided Tape
  5. LED strip with LED driver.
  6. OPTIONAL: LED strip jointers, if you have these then you can plug and play LED strip of any size easily to LED driver. I did not have one so I ended up with soldering and i am really bad at it :(.
  7. OPTIONAL : Photo Frame hanging hook or any hook
  8. A deep kitchen pan for boiling.
  9. Uniformly Cylindrical glasses or steel glasses

Lets get started with some preparation.

Step 2: Boil and Bend

In order to bend the popsicle sticks , we will boil them for 30 minutes. So...
  1. Put popsicle sticks in the pan and enough water so that all the sticks are submerged in it (Image 1).  NOTE:if you think you will need 70 sticks, I would suggest you boil 100 because many sticks will not bend or may break during the bending process.
  2. Boil the sticks for 30 minutes.(Image 2) .
  3. Remove the pan from the heat, do not remove the sticks from water and leave it till the water is warm enough to put your hand into.
  4. Now pick one stick at a time and gently bend it to fit inside the glass. Fit as many as possible inside one glass. (Image 3)
  5. In my case many sticks were broken or unable to bend (Image 4).
  6. Leave it overnight to dry.
  7. In the morning you will notice that the sticks will retain the curve, when you remove them from glass. NOTE: depending on the weather conditions you may want to leave them in sunlight for sometime in the morning before removing them from glass.
You may discuss about the best method for bending the Popsicle sticks but based on my experience I would suggest boiling. Some other methods includes
  1. Soaking in water overnight
  2. Soaking in hot water for few hours
  3. Steaming the sticks
Always remember, depending on type of wood used for making the sticks, these methods may or may not work.  

Now the sticks are ready , lets make the sunflower :).   

Step 3: The Making

Now comes the easy part.
  1. Out of all the bended sticks, you may find some sticks which are bended but also little twisted. We will not use these sticks.
  2. Glue the stick inside the inner lining of the embroidery ring (Image 1 & 2
  3. Keep gluing the sticks to form petals (Image 3).
  4. The completed sunflower will look like Image 4. Do not worry about the gaps in between, it will give a natural look as no two sticks will have the same curve. 

Try putting this structure over your head to have a feel of crown :D....LOL . (You know, I actually did this but did not click a photo :D.)

When I achieved this structure, I imagined many other possibilities, stay tuned for next step.

Step 4: Light Up and Done.

Once I made this, I had many thoughts about the lighting and I chose LED as the best option.
  1. Cut the LED strip to match the diameter of the embriodery ring. NOTE: LED strips are segmented so that they work even when cut, these segments are usuallly marked after every 3 LEDs in strip. Be careful when cutting it. If you are not sure about it, get some help from a local electrical store to make this arrangement for you
  2. Solder extra wire if you need more length. Then Attach LED driver (or adapter).
  3. Remove the LED strip sticker and stick the strip as shown in Image 1 and 2.
  4. Glue the hanger for hanging the sconce (Image 3). NOTE: This sonce is so light weight that you can actually use a double sided tape to stick it to wall or anywhere without a hanger.
  5. Light  up (Image 4)
Light up sunshine and your beautiful sunflower wall sconce is ready to take compliments :). (I got many and I am sure you will get more)

Want more?? Check out next steps for further possibilities.

Step 5: And Beyond

Before I lit this beauty up, I was finding the center very empty. I thought of adding cardboard in the center so that I could stick a picture over there or something similar.

So here are some thoughts and possibilities:
  1. If you have a round picture frame, pick the embroidery ring that matches its size and surround the frame using this sconce.
  2. Same goes for a round mirror.
  3. You can also fix this sconce as a ceiling sconce.
  4. Make two (or more) such sconce, one big and one small and arrange them on a wall.

Now about the bended sticks, I think we can create wonderful structures using them. For example, instead of a circle, how about a triangle or may be a pentagon or may be a twisted structure like a DNA molecule (as seen on CSI :D).

I hate to say this in every ible that "please vote for me if you like. The voting button and this ible usually starts to appear within 24 hours of publishing this ible"  but I just can't help it because of so many contests going on :D.

So please vote if you like, I have 17 drafts ible in my account waiting to be shared with all of you :D. I would really appreciate that.

Thank you for taking time to visit and read this ible. Please do share your feedback in the comments section. 

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