Or at least that is the plan.
Every year my sister and I try to do one craft show together; she with sewing and hand embroidery and I (of course) with tatting. We get two booths together at the local Christmas craft show and spend a day seeing the cool things other people make, visiting and – hopefully – selling a few items. There are only a few booths that have electricity available and they cost a few dollars more, which we’d rather not pay, so I’ve been thinking of ways to bring light to our booths without the cords. We’ve done the battery powered Christmas lights the last several years, which is great, but there should be other, inexpensive ways to bring more light to the booths if we can just think of them.
A light bulb ☼ came on for me about a month ago – the battery powered lights that are advertised for closets and under counters might just work.
I bought a package of these push-on lights, and sure enough, they give off quite a bit of light even in a lighted room, especially if they are aimed at something not too far away.
Then I thought that it would be a little more aesthetic to have shades over the lights instead of them being bare, so I picked up enough little shades for the lights I’d purchased. The shades were very plain and had to be dressed up a bit – besides, people would be able to see these easily from a distance and be drawn over to our booth, right? Which was the point in the first place.
I made an edging long enough to go around the bottom of a shade in DMC ecru size 30 as I had two shuttles already wound with it. I put it on a shade (without glue) to see how it looked, then placed it over one of the puck lights.
Oops. The harp of the light shade hung down so low it hit the puck light, so the light shade sat crooked.
I had to come up with a way to hold the shade up high enough the harp was clear of the light. I thought and I thought, and I played and I fiddled until I finally came up with something that works. I’m sure there are better ways but craft sticks, buttons and beads are what I ended up with. These are for the display only, not for sale anyway, right? They just had to hold up the shade.
But the whole thing did sit kind of low on the table. Maybe I needed something to make them taller?
That’s when I thought of the tin can. It had to be decorated, too, of course.
I sure am putting a lot of work into the display this year, especially as I’m not sure just how much light will be seen from these in a lighted room – but it’s such a kick to decorate those lamp shades!
“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”
Fancis Bacon
brainyquote.com