Making things even easier; they had Lurch (Aaron), Morticia (Chrissy), Cousin It (a prop that Aaron made) and Wednesday (Therese). All they needed was a Gomez or an Uncle Fester. It was an easy choice for me; Uncle Fester!
The outfit would be simple; a bald cap and a cloak from the party store, and some black makeup around the eyes. But there was something else that was associated with UF; a lightbulb! And not any lightbulb, but one that lit up when he put it into his mouth. Hmmm....I bet I could rig something up...
It took me a while (Radio Shack, permanently closed? How did I not know about this!?!?) but I finally found a place up in Needham that sold LED diodes. I also picked up a couple of coin batteries to make a pack out of, and headed home.
First off I needed a couple of lightbulbs to work with. The first one, I broke the glass and then carefully removed all remnants, leaving me with just a usable base...
Next, I needed a usable bulb, so I Dremmeled the end off, then proceeded to slice the threads and peel the rest of the base off...
Next, I carefully cut around the base of the bulb so that I'd have access to the inside...
Last, was to carefully clean the paste off. Man, this stuff didn't smell poisonous at all!!
Once that was all set, I messed with several methodes of creating the battery pack. First I tried zip ties but they made the thing too big to sit inside the base so I had to cut them off. Then I tried tape, which worked for about 2 minutes, but the finagling with the wires as I was trying to connect the diode, worked the connections loose and made the light flicker. Last, I tried wrapping with a coil of wire (over the tape, and pressing down on the connecting wires) and twisted the wire super tight with pliers, to really compress things and hold the wires tightly against the batteries. (Ideally, I would have used Aaron's soldering gun but I was running real short on time.) Then I twisted the wires to the diode leads and things looked like they were gonna work for me.
Next; insert the battery pack into the base and fit the bulb down over everything.
I had a glue gun ready to go but was so short on time that I had to resort to using duct tape to hold the thing together, but it worked!!
It was pretty cool, and it lasted the whole night so it worked as needed.
I really liked making this and there are lots of room for improvement. I would definitely solder the wires together, rather than twisting everything. Also, I'd use a third wire and run a circuit that I could connect/disconnect, to make the light turn on and off. And lastly; I'd hot glue everything together to make it nice and solid (the tape worked loose part way through the night and had to keep being pressed together).
But that's for down the road. As for a dry run (and on the spot, no less), it was a great success.
Oh yeah; our group won first prize at the contest! It was a gift card for the bar, which came in very handy toward paying down our tab. O:-)
And here we are in all our glory. What a glamorous family we are!
I love this time of year!!
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