How to make a Light Box

Light Box

Everyone has different talents and skills. It is good to know what you are not good at.  I am not good at freehand.  Nope.  So I will find a graphic on the internet.  Make a vector from it.  And print out that vector to make things work.  I have been looking at light boxxes for a long time.  But they can be $50 or more.  And I am sure they are totally work it.  But I don't have $50.  So I thought could I make one.

I just had a clear-is box,  some Christmas lights.   What else do you need.

This is how it looks.  The fabric is cheap Muslin.  I think it works.  

 This is the fabric when I am done. 

If I do this again.  I would get a piece of cardboard the size of the box.  And poke all the christmas light through the cardboard.  To help focus the light better.  Also maybe line the inside of the box with aluminum foil,  or something reflective.

Experiments:

I love to try things out to learn things.  I am still trying to figure out how to make a brown cowboy hat black.  I can purchase more fabric spray paint,  nope.  Or I can try normal black spray paint.  I am afraid to ruin the one hat I have. But I feel the hat is made of something similar to felt.  I have spare felt.  So I spray painted some fabric,  so see what happens.

If you can,  figure things out in small scale,  before moving to a larger scale.  Or before ruining your only one.

A black cowboy hat.

I am still working on my Big Mr. Freeze.But getting kind of scared.  So many new skills to learn,  anyway.  When that happens,  I switch gears.  So I am working on a Cheese Sandwich cosplay.  I bought a cheap brown cowboy hat. But I need it to be black. So I found some fabric spray paint.  I had a coupon.

So I tried it out. It seems this particular spray paint is super easy to clog.  Not sure what happened.  I got one-ish coat of the top.  I worked.  I think about 2 or 3 coats and it will look good.  If I can unclog the can.

Kinstugi Finshed

My goal was to make the bowl usable again.  I used glitter because I felt like it.  The glitter sheds,  somehow.  Maybe one day that will stop,  but for right now it is art.

Planning, and Planning.

Into every cosplay I have made there comes elements of fudging,  where you make things work.  And you know it isn't perfect,  and deep deep down it crushes your soul.  I am trying to super plan this cosplay so I won't have as many of those.  So I mocked up the forearm controls.  I went to staples and printed it out, because I don't own a printer.  And cut it out,  and placed it on the statues arm. And I think it looks pretty good.  I think it needs a little bit of rounding in the corners.  But I nailed the buttons.

Kintsugi cont...

I don't have the best manual dexterity. So I make jigs and other things to help me for that one fateful moment when you do something that you can't undo.  So I spent some time making a masking tape mask for the line I would be glittering.

 And then I applied the glitter.  Even as you read this the glitter cloud will still be spreading through north america.  Also I totally recommend some kind of gloves. Oh yes.  Soon I will remove the masking tape.  I hope the glue didn't glue the masking tape to the bowl.  Also the glue is food safe,  the glitteris non-toxic.  So....a bowl of cereal may by in my future.

I was recently introduced to Kintsugi.  The Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. I thought this was pretty neat looking. So I was thinking of what to break to do this. When my dishwasher broke one of my cool bowls.Their cool because they are square.   So a little googling.  Some help from some helpful people.  And 1trip to Lowes, then Home Depot. And tada.

I glued it and aligned it as best I could.  And polished off the excess glue. Now I wait.  According to the glue bottom it takes 24 hours to dry. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I try to apply the glitter.

My current plan is to start with the forearm.  I have pepukura files for the gun and the helmet.  So I will get to those later. But the rest of it is all me. So I spent about 2 hours to the math for the forearm.  

 Here is my version of 1/2 of the forearm controls for Mr. Freeze.

I purchased a Mr. Freeze at Heroscon.  I big statue.  I plan to use it to get all my measurement for my next cosplay. I also bought some little calipers.  Oh yeah.

For my Mr. Freeze from Arkhym City I want controls.  There are lights that light up, there is a face mask that goes up and down.  And I want sound effects. So my first plan is a bluetooth keyboard on my forearm,  and that talks to a bluetooth shield on a arduino controller.  So here is a bread board prototype working with a adafruit bluetooth keyboard.  The adafruit controller is super simple,  super easy to work with. I have gotten a successfull 3 hours of continuos control of a 1/3 N cell battery.  Not bad, I would like 12 hours.  I had some spare 1/3 N cell batteries and a socket for it.  I think I may need AA's or maybe AAA's.  I want to keep it small.

I made a snowglobe for my Mr. Freeze in Nov 2014.  I broke it in March 2015.  It seems a snowglobes will not survive a mere few feet fall.  Whoops.

So I grabbed the figurine as fast as I could. It was hard for me to find a ballerine in this size.  She is a cake topper. So I threw her in my bag.  Left everything else behind.  And was mad.

I got home.  Ordered a new globe. I looked at the figure. And the paint was flaking off. I peeled most of it off with my fingers.  I put it in my ultrasonic jewelry cleaner and removed 90% of it in 5 minues.  Not good.  So I set about figuring out how to make paint last underwater forever.

I assumed that my cake topper was the same plastic as plastic forks.  I painted 5 forks. All in different colors of enamel. Then coated them in different clear coats (resin spray, shellac, laquer, poly urathan).  And one control.  I let them sit in my jewelry cleaner until I saw a result. 3 weeks later the Shellac seemed to be untouched.  The rest had areas when paint was removed. So I finished enameling my figurine. Then shellaced her.

I do a Mr. Freeze cosplay.  He is a fun character.  It is a good costume to wear if you want your picture taken a lot. Horrible for shopping or trying to get things done.

One of his props is a snow globe.  I broke mine at Wizard World.  So I set about to remake it.

 When you make a snowglobe. According to other people on the internet, it is best to use distalled water.  So nothing grows in it.

One the figure is finished I plastic cemented her down. Then epoxy over that. Then a big thick continous bead of plastic cement around the perimeter for the dome. Once that is dry time to add water. The hole is really small really really small.  I found some cheap dollar store squirt guns worked well to pull the air out.  And the base held a little bit of water.  So using the squirt gun to pull the air out, I had it filled in about 1/2 hour.

I didn't realize until this step,  but the shellac on the figure reacted with the plastic cement fumes and was turned a little white-ish.  I can't fix it now.  So,  I guess I like it,  she looks more frozen-ish.

I also put grip tape or skate board deck tape on the bottom to help me hold it. My gloves make everything slippery.

Welcome to my blog

Hello All,

Welcome to my blog.  I build stuff.  A lot of time that stuff breaks. I then found I forgot how I made it.  So when it is time to repair it, I feel it takes longer then it should.  So I am making a blog of how I mak things,  so when I have to fix them,  I can be reminded on how I did it the first time.