I made an evil eye glowing Bender Pumpkin!
This actually took place in 2012, but I wanted to post here since I'm proud of this little bit of craftsmanship! I wanted to do something special when I carved my first pumpkin. I had some friends over, toasted up the seeds and then found myself with a perfectly impressionable gourd to play with!
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| The silhouette is poked out from pinpricks. |
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| There's the rotary tool in action! |
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| The final piece, ready to be popped out! |
I started that Friday night and worked away from the left side and drilled out the grill for the teeth, but by that time I was pretty worn out and put it away in the fridge for a couple days. BIG mistake! That next Tuesday, I had already seen it start to wilt but I was determined to finish it off regardless! That is why the mouth looks a bit strange on the left side. I carved out the eyes, the right hole, and then buckled down to put together the lighting electronics!
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| Planning and soldering the board. |
I had already been doing some work with 555s and had them laying around. For the flashing eyes, I used the first web site to come up in Google for 'LED Tester' which happened to be an Instructables link. I put two white and a green LED in parallel together. Then with a 330ohm resistor in series with the LEDs, I just soldered it all across the terminals of the 9v battery I was using and that gave off great light on its own.
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| Everything lights up! |
The last finicky part was getting the red LEDs to stay behind the eyes, all I did was put indentations in the flesh of the pumpkin for them to sit in. I covered the board with some tissue paper to hide it and improve colour, and Voila! My own scary Bender in a pumpkin!
To see all of the images from this project, check out my Picasa Web Album!
