plywood cut outs for yard

[shermanash]

OK i am pretty good a drawing and like working with wood so any ideas on how to make them light up without having to use spot lights. The spot lights shine in windows and cant sleep?

[tbone321]

Spot lights are the easyest way to go but you don't need large spots to light up wooden figures.  A small spot or flood near the base of each figure should light it up fine without too much light coming into your windows.  My lights shut down around 10PM during the week and around 11PM on the weekend so even if there were glare, it wouldn't interfere with my sleeping and if these figures are part of your show and you are using a light controller like an Express, you can always dim them down.  Another way would be to drill a lot of holes in your figure and incorporate colored mini's or C7's as part of the figures which if done properly looks really cool but is also a lot of work.

[shermanash]

OK my dad got two expresses ones his the other is mine so ill try it on drilling holes in the figure and using minis how big of strand do you re-comend I try ed it last year and my strand was to big my figures are 4 foot tall

[tbone321]

If you are going to thru-hole mount the lights, then the string length is almost meaningless.  What matters is the number of bulbs and possibly the bulb separation or the space between the bulbs.  If you have extra bulbs, you can always wrap them up behind the figure where they will not be seen.  What I have done in the past was to create and paint the figure and then cover the front with plastic.  Then I could use a black marker to indicate where I was going to place the lights.  If it didn't look right I simply removed the plastic and put on another piece and did it again until I got it the way I wanted it to look. Then it was simply a mater of drilling the holes thru the plastic sheet (which is now my template) and into the face of the figure.  I would keep your bulb count at or close to a multiple of 50 to reduce waste.  Have fun and good luck

[shermanash]

Thanks for the advise

[WWNF911]

Have you thought about using MR16's as spots? Or is that what you're trying to avoid. Just thought it might be less of an obvious flood as more like landscape acent lighting.

I'm thinking about doing the same as you except doing the nightmare before Christmas theme with some motorized movement. Unfortunately, unlike you I'll need to find an artist or 2.

[Freebird]

Not to take over your thread Shermanash  but WWFNF911  but years ago  I purchased drawings from Sherwood Creations that all i had to do was trace onto a sheet of plywood and cut and paint. they look very awesome.    Try that to solve your artist probelms.

Freebird