How to Make Acorn Cap Solar LED Lights

5 Materials
$3
2 Hours
Medium
Our little acorn cap solar LED lights are the perfect finishing touch for a fairy garden. They are powered using an adapted LED garden solar light and look adorable when the sun goes down. This tutorial is in two halves. First, we show you how to adapt the garden solar light and then how to make the string of acorn cap lights.
LED Garden Solar Lights are cheap and readily available from dollar and pound stores. Below is a step by step video that shows you exactly how to adapt one so that you can use it to power your lighting project. It really is simple to do so do give it a go!
Once you have adapted your garden solar light you can move on to making the string of acorn cap LED lights.
To make a string of acorn cap LED lights, you will need: *Acorn Caps *LED Bulbs *Copper Wire *Sticks (we used wooden round lolly sticks) *Solder and Soldering Iron *Small drill bit for making holes in the lolly sticks to feed the wire through *Something to stand your poles up in while you attach your wires and lights. We used plastic covered copper wire so had to strip the plastic off before we started to assemble our lights. We also assembled our street light poles and dipped them in a solution of tea to stain them.
Our caps were freshly collected and soft, so we were able to push the wires of the LED bulbs straight through them. If you are using dry caps, you may need to drill a little hole before you can insert yours. If you look closely at the photo above, you will see that one of the LED bulb stalks is longer than the other. The longer stalk is the positive. When you come to mount your bulbs onto the copper wire, all the positives must join the same wire otherwise that bulb inserted wrong will not light up!
Our string holds six acorn cap LEDs (any more and the solar unit might struggle to light them up). We started by stringing the copper wire onto our posts. Pilot holes drilled through the arms of the posts are used to pass the wire through. It is then wrapped around the arm to hold it secure. Once the lights are in use it is vital that the two copper wires don't touch; otherwise, it will cause them to short.
Once the posts and wire are set up, you can solder the acorn cap LEDs into place. Remember to have all the positives (the long stalk) attached to the same wire.
Next solder your adapted solar power unit in place.
Then it's simply a matter of choosing where to position the lights in your fairy garden. And waiting for the sun to go down.
You can find more photos of our cute little acorn cap LED lights here. We are building our fairy herb garden in stages, and we started with our solar fairy waterfall which you can check out here. Two-thirds of the garden is still under plastic waiting patiently to be planted.
Suggested materials:
  • Copper wire
  • Acorn caps
  • LED garden solar light
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Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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Frequently asked questions
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  3 questions
  • Elise Elise on Oct 13, 2017

    Great idea. Can u give me some ideas for re using empty soda cans pls?

  • Robin Robin on Oct 19, 2017

    Absolutely love this one ☝! Can you tell me how you make or what you use for the fairy houses and especially the roofs?

  • Jan12244901 Jan12244901 on Oct 25, 2017

    Where can we buy the LED bulbs?

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