What with the new plastic Icehouse pieces available from Looney Labs, I figured I should make an attractive little platform for them to stand on.
"Attractive", in this case, means "luminescent".
(The clear pieces are from a test run that the molding company did. They're not generally available, sorry. The Looneys gave some to me as a gift.)
(All images are links to larger versions.)
The active element of the stand is a strip of electroluminescent material -- the same stuff I used for the Cloak of Light. I folded it back and forth to make a fairly continuous (if stripy) sheet. It's stuck down to a square of white posterboard. Then I put a cover frame on top; this is just a square of black posterboard with 25 one-inch square holes cut in it. The frame around the edge is strips of foam-core covered with electrical tape.
The power supply is the standard Californeon transformer that came with the electroluminescent ribbon. It's hooked up to a Radio Shack 12-VDC 1-amp transformer, which runs off wall current. (One could also substitute 12 volts worth of batteries for the second transformer. Eight C-cells work fine.) I did a bit of soldering, put convenient plug-connecters on all the wires, and oo-la-la -- all done.
(By the way, the third and fourth pictures above show the ribbon turned off. I know it looks bright, but that's just my clumsiness with the digital camera controls -- the posterboard is overexposed. The ribbon is the copper-colored stuff.)
Here's an earlier attempt. Instead of using Californeon ribbon, I cut open thirteen Indiglo nightlights and used the elements. Note how I had to arrange the holes strangely, to fit two one-inch squares on each elliptical element.
Unfortunately, the nightlights seem to suck up much more power than the ribbon. The transformer can barely power five of them. Thirteen is right out.
(On the up side, if you want to think of it that way, this arrangement leaves a huge wad of wires sticking out. If it had worked, it would have been ugly. The ribbon stand is much tidier.)
If I make another stand, I'll try to get a laptop backlight. That's a single solid sheet -- much more convenient.
Footnote: a year later, I took apart this mess and used five of the elliptical elements to make a Flashy-Light Thing.
Last updated November 23, 2000.
More images can be found among Eeyore's pictures of the Icehouse release party, at PhilCon 1999.