Pinwheel Lights

First day of actually using this blog! It only took 5 years after setting it up to get started, and I am not a procrastinator! I guess it just had to become important enough and I needed to feel as if I have enough to say.

After much prodding I finally got my daughter, ZZ La Rue, to commit to entering her crafty and art projects in a blog and decided that I should put my money where my mouth is.

So here is the plan...
Mr. Lonewolf and I often undertake lofty projects for our home. the outcomes vary but after trial and error we typically use the best of both of our minds to come up with something post worthy. The plan is to post what we do and share, when possible the process.

Things I am looking forward to sharing - new entertainment center for the basement, couch re-upholstery, Valentine Vodka pin up contest finales! and the dress I have created for that. Pinwheel lights, sorry wont be a tutorial, I am working on developing them for Etsy sales but I am really excited about them.

As for the lights, I will share a bit about the come about of them. As we were making our Christmas lists this year I mentioned that youngest son, Stinker, needed a light to replace the glowing skeleton strand that was left hanging in his room after Halloween. He likes to hoard things and this time it was a green glowing strand of lights with, mostly broken, dangling skeletons. He haphazardly "tossed" them over the curtain rod in his room and called it good. Sometime after Thanksgiving the lights gave out, don't know why or how, don't really care, I am just thankful they didn't catch anything on fire, this time. (another story for another time)

So as Lonewolf and I were searching for a light for his room and not finding anything that suited our standards.

I said, "I really want something like they had in Sleepy Hollow, it was this metal cut out spinney thing that projected images on the wall." After some minor internet research we found an image. The lamp was made of cut and punctured tin. Looked easy enough, we started to research possible ways to build such a thing and thus the project began...

3 very sleepless nights and days later, a week before Christmas mind you, we had something. After our fruitful trip to Salvation Army turned up some "Christmas tins", an ugly old lamp, and some basement rummaging for spray paint, nuts and bolts and various other usable items we began what would become a long process of failure. Apparently, the metal of the tins was too heavy to withstand the delicate balance required for the spinning effect to work, not to mention unsafe for Stinkers room, never know what he will get into. We moved on to recycled soda bottles and really thought we had hit on something. We tried many variations and failed many times. Finally at 3 am we had something that would spin, feeling tired yet somehow fulfilled we wandered off to bed, knowing that it needed refinement but truly satisfied that we accomplished something!

I awoke at 7 am with recollections of a high school geometry lesson swimming frantically through my thoughts, I waited until 10 before rousing the wolf. He was excited by my energy for the project. We spent the day working on it. I drafted something in Illustrator that would give us a pinwheel effect, much like a spinning vent you see on chimneys. Needless to say it was a long day of research, trips to the thrift store, art store and hardware store. Many different variations happened before we finally landed on what worked.

We opted for an image of a fire breathing dragon, the spinning effect of the back light gives movement to the dragon picture. Stinker is a huge LOTR fan, actually on our afternoon "date" to see the Hobbit he wouldn't sit still or stop talking. He narrated the entire 3 hour film on what would happen next and in which LOTR movie different songs, locations and characters appeared. In the end we created a "Smog" lamp. And the results are truly charming. 

The saga continues, we moved on from a simple light for a child's room to ideas that may be usable for commerce. As we create new lights they will be offered on Etsy. We plan to do a MI waterways series (with a portion of the profits being donated to preserving MI water sources), a pin up girl series and a steampunk series. Keep an eye out for the new pinwheel lights!