Handmade LED Strips

This instructable explains how I made my own LED strip with the use of extra parts in my junk bag to give my wife's shelves new life.

Step 1: Items Needed to Get Started

Here are the simple materials and tools you will need to make your cheap LED strip.

1. I had an old battery operated led Christmas lights.
2. Wire Strippers
3. Electric tape
4. What is not shown here, but also needed, is a 9volt battery.

That's it!

Step 2: Dismantle the LED Lights

Strip and break down led lights and set them to the side for later. If your leds look like the picture above you will notice the positive and negative prongs. We will manipulate them later.

Step 3: Time to Strip!

With the wire stripper pull the wire completely from the plastic leaving you with only the copper wire.

Tear a strip of electric tape and push it into the sticky side of the tape. You should have two rows. Don't forget to leave some copper wire longer than the tape for later.

Step 4: Prepping the LED Lights

Tear off another piece of black tape. Fold one end like picture 1, take a pair of scissors and make a small incision on the non-sticky side. This will be where you insert the LED bulbs. The negative and positive poles should be in the sticky side.

Step 5: Connecting the LEDs

This step will need some trial and error if the negative and positive terminals are not easily marked. If your LED terminals are parallel spread them apart like split so that they touch the copper wires on each side.

To test that you have the LEDs in the right way use your 9 volt battery to test it by placing the head of the battery where one copper side on the end of the strip touches the other. If a bulb does not ligyh then turn it to match the others. If all the bulbs do not light simply flip the battery and they all should light.

Making sure the terminals are touching the copper you can now join the two pieces of tape together to secure it.

Connect the battery and attach it where ever you like. I chose my wife's shelf.

Easy as pie!