Proto-Board Christmas Ornaments

This instructable shows you how to make simple, yet elegant Christmas ornaments by soldering with prototyping boards. It's a great way to practice your soldering skills, and to make a cool Christmas craft.

While practicing soldering on proto-boards, I realized that you could bend the wire into different shapes or letters to make designs on the board. After making a couple, I realized the holes in the proto-boards were the perfect size for Christmas ornament hooks, and I hung them on my tree.

Step 1: Materials

This instructable uses very few materials, all of which can be found around your house. After reading through all of the steps, you may want to include other components on your ornaments to spice them up.

You will need:
-Wire (non-stranded will work the best)
-A Prototyping Board (depending on the size of your ornament, you may need to cut the board into quarters)
-Solder
-Soldering Iron

**Remember: Always solder in a well ventilated area so you do not inhale any fumes that could arise.

Step 2: Solder It!

Once you have your design bent in your wire, strip the ends and place them through the holes of the proto-board. Bend the leads out a little bit so the wire won't fall out when you turn the board over to solder it.

Make sure that you have the ornament oriented so the wire design is on the side without copper pads, and the side you will solder has the copper pads.

Once you have your design set, flip the board over and begin to solder the leads down. When I learned to solder, my teacher said that good solder joints looked like volcanoes, okay joints look like Hershey Kisses, and bad joints look like balls. Try to make sure all of your joints look like volcanoes. Once all of your soldering is complete, snip the excess amount of the lead that's unsoldered, off.

Step 3: You're Done! Make More!

I found that once I made one of these, I had to make a couple more. They're simple, yet satisfying to build.

Once you can make a couple successfully, try soldering a circuit onto the board and power it by a button cell battery. The possibilities are endless. Happy Holidays!

Comments

[killerjackalope]

Nice one... The only complaint I have is the photos, a few nicer macros might be nice... I like the eventual outcome of these, if you find those red circuit boards, kind of rare, the only one I've got is rather vital to the working of my brother's pimped graphics card... But I digress, the red ones would give a very Christmassy look, you could add blinking LEDs or some such run off of button cells hidden on the back...

[Superchef]

I agree, some macro-focus photos would have complemented it well, but my camera was acting up at the time. Thanks for the comment!

[killerjackalope]

Try aiming to one side to get it to focus on the edge then move around to take the photos, might help a bit.

[jadeibet]

I like the finished products! Very cool idea superchef!