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Up Your Lighting Game - Inexpensive Multi-Colored Pin Lights

LED Lighting Supplies

Here's a quick project that you could do in an evening to take your lighting up a notch - Pin lights - those tiny, hidden lights that add just the right amount of magic to everything... Here's a quick and CHEAP method I've used to build these. Let's do this! Materials: Amazon LED flashlights (or any type you like) Amazon Colored lighting gels Black Duct Tape and Aluminum Tape from Hardware Store

Cutting Out Gels

Step 1: Cut Out the Lighting Gel Insert You could skip this step if you're going for bright white pin lights everywhere, however, if you want to tweak the colors and add small pin "splashes" of highlights, you'll need some color gel material to get started. Simply cut out little shapes (circles with wings) by tracing around the lens of your LED and leave little tabs (wings) so they help stay taped down.

Test

Just by holding the gel up to the light, you can see the color shift! Take a strip of duct tape and secure the colored gel by the wings around the front end.

Part 2: Make the Hoodie

To keep the lights from becoming noticeable, make a tape hood using duct tape and aluminum foil tape around the lens to hide the beam as it exits the flashlight

Rolling it Up

I make these using a strip of duct tape with a piece of aluminum foil tape stuck to the top. The aluminum foil tape does a couple of things: 1) Keeps the duct tape from folding up on itself and sticking to the lens 2) Adds reflectivity to shine brighter 3) Adds opaqueness to the somewhat transluscent duct tape.

Shining Bright

Part 3: Roll 'em tight Once the hood is wrapped around - like a tube, trim the side with scissors to allow more light to exit. Then, wrap the whole thing in black duct tape to hide it.

ou can even use this technique on th

You can even use this technique on the larger LED yard lights (the large one above was $6 from Home Depot).

Example
Example
Example
Example
Example
Example
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