LED Light Box with Foil Quilled Dandelion Design
A number of months ago, I purchased a Brother PE 800 embroidery machine and I have been exploring its usage. I discovered an online computer program called Turtlestitch
https://www.turtlestitch.org whereby beautiful designs can be coded with SNAP! These designs can then be transferred to the embroidery machine via USB. These same designs created in Turtlestitch can be made into a SVG and downloaded to the Silhouette software. In this blog posting, I created an embroidery version for the PE 800 embroidery machine, a Foil Quilled Silhouette version and a Silhouette Sketch pen version.
The inspiration for this design came from a fabulous group of educators who have helped me broaden my horizons using Turtlestitch through our weekly "Tea and Turtlestitch" meetings. Portions of this dandelion design were coded by Margaret Low, a professor at the University of Warwick. The design was modified by Lan Heng and then I further enhanced this dandelion design. Here is my design on the Turtlestitch website.
https://www.turtlestitch.org/users/Elaine/projects/Dandelions%20For%20Light%20Box. The design can be exported from this website to a Tajima/DSF file for your embroidery machine.
The string of 12 LED lights was purchased at Dollar Tree. Two AA batteries are required for the LED lights.
Here is the PDF. I used 110 lb. cardstock for the light box (65 lb cardstock will work too) and a sheet of Park Lane "Heritage of Home" paper to frame the light box. I used vellum for the Foil Quilled version. I used Aleene's Tacky glue, scotch tape and Glue Dots in this project.
Here is the .Studio file.
Here is the SVG.
Make the Light Box
Align all of the box edge pieces so that they are oriented in the same direction.
Mountain fold all of the horizontal edges so that the pieces look as above.
Apply glue to the horizontal tab. This tab is the shorter of the two horizontal edge tabs.
Adhere the glue by pressing down on the paper and exposing the bottom edge. The piece will become flat.
Once the glue has dried, reorient the edges to make a rectangular box. Repeat the above three instructions for the other three box edge pieces.
The two tabbed sides are different. On the side with all the edges aligning, fold the two small tabs inward as shown above.
Apply glue to the two small tabs.
Adhere the one tab on the left side and then apply glue to the top of this tab.
Adhere the other side tab to complete the right side.
On the left side of this piece where the side edges are misaligned, fold the two small tabs inward and then apply glue to the them.
Fold down the top tab and adhere.
One side of the light box is completed. Repeat so that all of the sides look as the photo above.
In the photo above, I rotated the piece by 180 degrees from the previous photo.
Apply glue in the three corner areas as shown above. Each surface will adhere to different parts of the adjoining piece.
Adhere a corner of another side piece to the two glued areas and then fold up the tab to complete the corner.
Repeat for the other three sides. Apply glue to the top of the inside of all four sides of the square.
Insert the LED Light pattern and adhere this piece to the glue.
Apply glue to the inside edge of the four edge tabs. Fold the tabs down and adhere to the box.
LED light panel completed.
Cut the vellum or embroidery to a 6 x 6 inch size and sandwich two borders on either side of the design.
LED lights from Dollar Tree
Please note the caution on the back of the package. As always, this project is intended with adult supervision and the LED lights should not be left on unattended as this could possibly be a fire hazard.
There are 12 LED lights in the package. As I only needed six, I doubled up the lights in this project.
Thread the LED lights through the hole in the back of the battery holder piece.
Fold the battery holder piece as shown above.
Thread the tab of the battery holder piece through the slit in the back and glue it down. Attach the bottom tab of the battery holder to the back by gluing it down also . The completed battery holder piece is shown above.
Orient the battery holder piece, the LED light panel and the design so that they are all aligned correctly when the lights are illuminated.
Attach the LED lights to the back of the LED light panel by pinching two LED lights together, threading them through the hole in the paper and taping them to the back with Scotch tape.
This is the view of the front of the LED light panel with the two LED lights illuminated.
Repeat for all of the other lights. Above is a photo of all of the lights taped to the back. I applied Glue Dots to the edge of the LED light panel and adhered it to the front of the battery holder piece.
The LED light box is ready for the embroidery or the Foil Quilled design to be attached.
The embroidery is attached with a pretty paper cover which is slide over the edge of the LED Light box. Fold the two tabs upward on the pretty paper pieces.
Glue the four corner tabs to create a cover for the box.
Lay the frame over the top of the LED light box.
Slide the pretty paper frame over the top of the LED light box.
Here is the embroidered frame.
Embroidered frame in the LED light box.
The three versions of the dandelion design, Foil Quilled design (top), embroidered design (bottom left) and a Silhouette sketch pen design (bottom right.)
I think that the Foil Quilled version looks better then the sketch pen version as the colors in the pen version are not as fine and vibrant as the Foil Quilled version.
