 So my youngest is all about drawing right now. And our favorite thing to do is to trace these chibi characters from a YouTube channel called Dross of Cute. What she's been doing is mostly printing images and then tracing them by taping it up on a window and then putting another piece of paper over top. Now that works great during the day time, but right now it's dark by the time we get home from school and work. So now like a year ago this week, we went through a similar kind of thing, cold temperatures over inside a lot, so we're doing a lot of drawing. And we set up this kind of Frankenstein light box thing for her. And all we did there was we took the glass out of an old picture frame, stuck some foam core and tin foil behind it and then pointed a bunch of little LED desks lights under meat to kind of bounce light up through the paper. It was a terrible, awful thing, but the point is it worked kind of for the moment and she remembered that. So all we wanted to do was to build a better thing that would work a little bit more consistently and have a little bit more even light, but we didn't want to break the bank on it. Naturally what we did was we came down with the basement and started scavenging for parts. So we stuck with the picture frame idea. We found a picture frame with the glass that looked to be about the right side, popped the glass out, crime the frame, gave it a coat of pink paint. Like even when my little list is in the workshop soldering things and dremeling things, like she's still kind of a girly girl with a terrible case of the unicorns right now. So bright pink it is. It's all about keeping things balanced. So light boxes have got a defrosted glass look to them. I meant to diffuse the light as it comes through, give a nice even white light instead of like bright light bulbs underneath. So we hit the glass with a coat of that same white primer. Don't do this. I'll talk more about why later in the video. For the bottom floor of the light box, we grabbed a piece of foam core that we had light around, stuck some aluminum foil down on it so that we would have a reflect surface. So years ago, I ordered a few rolls of these LED light strips. They were super cheap. There were like a few bucks of piece shipping included. Just generic kind of brandless Chinese LED light strips. So these we chopped up cut to length in order to fit within the picture frame. So the other thing we had to make sure was that we were only cutting these LED strips at very specific break points. So it's labeled where you can and can't cut the LED strips. All was a good idea to make sure that you were cutting on those lines. So then to expose the copper leads in order to solder it all back together, we grabbed an exacto knife and started cutting down through the rubberized coating on the LED strips. Once again, do not do this. Once we had all the contacts exposed, we laid them down in roughly regular intervals. And then using the adhesive backing on the LED strips, just stuck them down into place. As makers, we're kind of pack rats. So we had an old 12 volt adapter lying around that we could use to plug directly into the LED strips. Now, if you don't have a 12 volt adapter for this, a 9 volt battery will probably work okay as well. It's just, it's gonna drain kind of quickly. Then the soldering started. After cutting up the LED strips, we have to connect them all back together. So grab the soldering iron and cut to work. Now while making these connections, things moved around a little bit. The adhesive back, the adhesive back, the adhesive back, the adhesive back, the adhesive back, the adhesive back, the adhesive backing on the LED strips isn't all that good. So we stuck them back down as best we could, and then just took hot glue gun, and stuck them down permanently. Next, we reassembled the painted picture frame, slid in the glass painted side down, so that we had a smooth work surface on top, tightened all the screws, and tacked on the foam core with some more hot glue. We fired it up, did a test try on it, and it works great. So, we're done. Now, let's go to the next one. This is the first one. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. However, like with a project based learning, we learned some lessons about how we might do this differently the next time. Okay, first thing, spray paint things with glass, not a great idea. Two main reasons for this. First reason, we didn't do a super good job of cleaning the glass before we started spray painting it, and the finish actually started to come off and crack in a couple of places, didn't look very good, and no amount of sanding and repainting was really gonna fix that. Two, spray paint is not the best way to get a really even finish on a perfectly flat surface. If I was gonna do this again, because the LEDs are so cool, like they don't heat up when they've got power going through them that much, I would probably hit the glass with some spray adhesive and then lay down parchment paper on the back. Okay, second lesson learned. Cutting into the LED strips was not a great idea. The chance of severing something that you don't want to sever while you're doing that is pretty high, and we definitely did. And as a result, there are a couple of solder points, a couple of connections in there that are not quite as strong as we would like them to be. The better way to go about it is just working a fingernail or a craft knife for something in between the rubberized coating and the LED strip itself, peeling them apart rather than trying to cut through the rubber to the strip. It's actually way less work in a long run and it gives way better results. We figured this out about halfway through the process. Finally, the base. The foam core was something we just happened to have available in a piece that was roughly the right size for this application, but that doesn't mean it's an ideal material for this. It does make it nice and light for moving around, but realistically, it's not going to hold up to a ton of abuse. Then finally, the wiring. We didn't spend really all that long on this build, so the wiring is a little sloppy. Not only that, but because the base and the wiring are together bigger than the actual picture frame, we've kind of got this halo of wires sticking out around the light box. It doesn't really make any difference, but it doesn't look that great. But the point is we wanted a light box, we had some parts lying around, and so we built one. It's not perfect, but things often don't have to be to achieve your goal. I think the lesson here for me as much as for the kids is that the first attempt can be successful if it's just good, if it's fine. The next one can be great. Hey, if you are an artist on a budget, this is a great way to build yourself a quick and dirty DIY light box. My favorite thing about this build is that it's totally scalable. We did it literally with junk we had lying around that otherwise wasn't being used. You want to build one that is as bare bones functional as this one? Awesome. Go for it. You want to grab some better materials and build a box around the bottom instead of just having an open sheet there? Phenomenal. You want to go that one step further and permanently wire in the adapter and then add a switch in there so you can turn it on and turn it off from the unit itself instead of unplugging it like spectacular. Do that. The thing I'm really trying to say is the projects don't have to be super complicated in order to be fun, satisfied and full of project based learning. If you like this video, hit the like button. If you're new here, please hit subscribe. For our new subscribers and there have been a few of you lately, thank you for being patient with our whenever we get around to it release schedule. I'm Trevor. Thank you for watching. Love. Make sure. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing. Go build a thing.