Christmas card with LED lights

 

For Christmas 2020 I decided to create a snow scene with lit houses.

This is very similar to the card I did with Santa a few years back, where I had coloured cellophane in the windows to give the effect of the houses being lit up.

Except this time, I wanted to actually make it light up.

I started with basic silhouettes of a village to create three layers. The first was of just houses, the next has a tree, and is taller than the first layer so they peek above it. The final layer contains a church, and more houses. (Sorry, no photos of them on their own.)

Each layer has a tab at either end, and I cut them out twice so they could be glued together. I used Linda Chapman’s black card by the way, so I had to glue them together to make sure they had some strength. I did that first, and let them dry.

You can just about see all three layers in this photo.

After creating the “50” card, I decided to put glitter card behind the houses, so that as the light shines through, then it will hopefully shimmer a little, to give it more life. I decided on glitter card rather than mirror as it would diffuse the light.

I also had a decent selection of cellophane to use. The nice thing about it is that you can combine colours, especially if they are going to be lit from behind.

The first thing I did was to stick the film behind each window. The church was the trickiest, as the Rose window is too small to put too much detail into it, I overlapped the film so it created a structure in the middle, and gave it a little more detail.

I made sure each house had its own personality and colour where possible. I used my favourite 3 in 1 glue for this task.

My original idea was to put the lights on the panel behind the first one, so the first row of houses would have the lights on the tree panel, and so on. But I realized this would mean the lights were too far back, or the second panel too close in.

So instead, I cut out versions that had no windows or openings. Again, I had to cut this out twice, and stick them together to make the card strong enough for that I needed it to do. There are also no flaps on this layer.

I could then stick the glitter card to this layer. I didn’t make the entire layer glitter card, as there was no need to.

Then came the fun part, adding the lights. This took a bit of working out, as I had to count the amount of bulbs on the strand (20), and make sure that they didn’t all go on the first layer. I wanted the tree to have a generous amount of lights as well. So I put only five on the first layer.

I toyed with quite a few ways of attaching the lights—staples won out. These are micro lights that are battery powered and are LED so don’t generate heat.

You have to be very careful with this kind of light as there isn’t a plastic sheath of the wire connecting the bulb, so it’s easier to break the wire. I made sure to staple with the wire in the middle. You can see how tiny the bulbs are—those are ordinary staples in the photo—but they look huge. I also made sure that I started with the “end” of the lights—the part without the battery. This is going to go at the back of the card.

I was also careful to get the bulbs as close to the centre of each window as I could, so as not to lose the light. I also had to try to loop the wire between each bulb as much as I could so as little of it as possible shows through the windows, which is why it takes such a meandering path.

Once they were placed, it gave me the position for a slit to be cut for the wire to allow the lights to continue to the tree layer. I had to make sure that the final bulb was close to the slit, and that the slit wouldn’t show in the final product.

Just placing the outer layer over the lights layer shows the final effect:

Now I had to join these two layers. Originally I was going to use a series of tabs at the side of each layer, and stick them all together. I realized that was going to be a nightmare, so instead I removed the tabs from the lighting layer, and added foam pads. These ones are black, so hide reasonably well, although they are not as dark as the card used. I positioned them top and bottom to give enough support, then stuck the outer layer to the lighting layer.

This has the advantage of also blocking light leakage from the tops of the houses, so the majority of the light comes from the windows.

The layer behind this one was the tree. This was to have the majority of the lights as I wanted the tree to really stand out.

This was not an easy task. To avoid having multiple switches on the card, I had to craft this level with the first one attached via the wire.

Here you can see the reverse of the tree layer. The first layer is attached, and I’ve threaded the wire through the slit created in the tree layer.

 

I then wound the lights around the tree—half going up, half coming down so the wire could be threaded through to the final layer. This is two layers of card stuck together by the way, just to give it strength. I moved the cable to the back of this layer so it would remain as hidden as possible.

 

Lit up! Despite my best efforts you can still see some of the wires.

Because of the length of the wire between each bulb, the backside of the tree isn’t quite as pretty. You also have to be aware that the bulbs make it difficult to bend the wire just where you need to. Once again, staples came in hand, and I tucked the wire into itself to make the mess a little more compact.

The gap between the two layers is very narrow, this was because I wanted to avoid bulbs being stuck between the layers, and there was no need to have a larger gap—even if it did make it more difficult for me.

On the first version of this card I added strings of beads to the tree to act as decorations. It wasn’t too bad, I used black thread, and the effect was quite pretty, but it was a lot of work. In the end I abandoned the idea, but you can still see the beads on some of the photos.

Finally I added a black layer to the back of the tree. This was mostly to keep things neat, and I used Pinflair to even out the glue layer over the wire.

Both layers lit.

The final layer was the  worst!

As with the other house layer, I added the glitter card to the backing piece (this one was cut out with windows, but it doesn’t matter).

Then I had to add the lights. Don’t forget the other tow layers are still attached. Because I had gone up the tree, then down it, it was already at the bas of the tree and at the back. This meant I could just string the wire across to the church. However I did have to cut a slot into the front of the church layer at the right point so the wire could reach the back, and could be stapled in place.

To make it easy to handle, I laid the first two layers facedown on the work surface. Because I was careful in preserving the length of wire as much as I could, I had enough to work with, but I was carful not to keep bending the wire too much.

I also cut a slit in the side of the card so I could feed the cable though it.

Again I used black foam tape to go around all the houses and church, adding a strip at the bottom for stability.

You can see the battery pack for the lights just behind the layer.

The battery pack needed to be discrete. I think now I’d fit it into the back of the card, and have it sticking out of the side, rather than stuck to the back, but at the time that seemed to be the best thing to do.

To start with, I needed to create a box to contain the card. I’ve made other cards since this one, and I think I would do it differently, but this was how I did it.

 

First I cut and folded a piece of card that followed this format:

Basically the central area is the same width as the layers, but the height is more to give the scene some room.

The bottom and top folds are the same depth as all the layers plus a little extra.

The side folds are the same as the bottom and top folds.

Unfortunately this was all a little too large for my card, so the top flap is too short, and needed to be added to.

I cut the corners so they could be folded in, and create anchors for the box.

I also added a layer of card on the back to stiffen it.

I then cut a slit in the back of the card so I could feed the battery compartment through.

I glued it to the back of the card over the slit so it was invisible.

And added a piece of card over the hole in the inside of the card. This is to stop light leakage behind the switch.

I then glued the box together, using the corner flaps at the bottom, but also gluing the flaps on the side of the layers to fix the card into place. Excuse the Dogs of Foo—they’re just really good at holding things upright!

I also stuck down the top of the box.

To make the top and sides as well as the front neater, I cur pieces that were the same dimensions of the edge I wanted to cover, and left a small amount overlapping the front to make it look neat.

To cover the switch, I created a template by drawing around one of them, and using that to cut out a piece of black card to stick over it. It just took a thin piece of card around the edge to make it less visible.

 

I then added glue, and fake snow to the tops of the houses, mostly to hide the joins.

Finally, I added a cut out Merry Christmas to the front.

So was this card successful?

In the end, I was reasonably pleased with the card, but I think I can do far better. The more I do, the more I learn about the materials and how to get a better quality appearance. I got too caught up in making the box, where I think something just as effective could be created without it.

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