Made A Nightlight (18/366)

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine ..."
~ Harry Dixon Loes


Last year, while helping Nick with I've Never Done That, I asked him if he had ever made a suncatcher. He hadn't. So we picked up a suncatcher kit. Only this one was not just suncatchers, it was a nightlight suncatcher kit! So awesome. It came with five different suncatchers that you could paint yourself, hooks and suction cups for hanging them, and then the nightlight setup so you could choose one to have as a nightlight (and rotate them as you liked).


If you know me, you know how absolutely crazy I am about my nephew, Micah. He's the coolest kid I know. We wanted to make these for Micah, but Nick never got a chance to make them. I was actually pretty stoked, because it seemed like a super cool project to me. Now I get to do it!

At first, I wanted to do the monkey suncatcher for Micah's nightlight - I call him a monkey all the time. But HUGE BUMMER, the brown paint was all dried up! I'm assuming it was because we bought the kit about a year ago, but still - maybe these things should come with expiration dates. I could deal with that. Anyway, since brown was the major color used for the monkey, it looked like that was out. My other choice was the tiger. In Chinese tradition, tigers are supposed to be protectors, especially of children. Plus, it's orange and black! Best colors ever!

I started out by filling in all the black parts of the tiger.


Then, as I went to fill in the orange ... I found that the orange was dried out too!!! Oh man. In fact, I then tried every single other paint color, and they were ALL tried out. Horrible.

Well, I figured that it being a kid's craft kit, the paint was most likely water soluble. So I added a bit of water to the orange tube, and stirred with a skewer. It pretty much worked, but the orange was considerably lighter. So I added some yellow goo from the yellow tube and some red goo from the red tube, and tried to mix that up as best I could. It was okay - not great, but okay. I used this mix to fill in the rest of the tiger. After it was all filled in, I decided the red and yellow bits of paint kind of gave it a more artsy quality anyway.


I attached the nightlight suncatcher holder, and also noticed that this nightlight was a light-sensing kind. Cool! Others just use a switch:


And after Mr. Tiger dried, voila! An awesome tiger suncatcher nightlight.


I'm totally disappointed that I didn't get to do all the other suncatchers for the nightlight, so I think I'll go to the craft store and see what kind of paints are available for suncatchers (I hope I don't have to buy a whole kit with MORE suncatchers for this!). When they're all done, I think it will be a cool set for The Kid to have.


Related Links:
Xtreme Sun Nite Lite Kit: Safari
Xtreme Sun Nite Lite Kit, Princess