Monday, September 28, 2009

Giving An Owl Decoy Glowing Eyes

First you need an "Owl Decoy"...you know...the plastic ones people use to try and keep pigeons away...but don't work? Anyway, an old neighbour was throwing this out, so I grabbed it.
I needed to make it look more creepy for Hallowe'en though, so I figured I'd give it glowing eyes.

I cut open the back of the head with a craft knife, leaving the top attached as a "hinge".

Inside the head I could see that the eyes were not clear. I decided to drill out the centres.

I did this carefully.....

and now I had openings to place LEDs into.

I noticed that the drill bit didn't go through the "glass" of the eyes, just the black plastic backing...which was good! I tried to drill out as much of the black "pupil" as I could.

Then I took an old LED assembly I had hacked from a miniature Christmas light set which I was originally planning on placing in a bush as "glowing eyes". I now had a much better use for it! You don't normally need batteries this large, but because I wanted to make use of the on/off switch, I'm using these. I was experimenting with "parallel" versus "series" wiring last Hallowe'en and I can't remember what I did here. There are a lot of good LED wiring tutorials on the Monsterlist of Halloween Projects Link
Anyway, I fit the lights into the holes I had drilled.

And now the owl's eyes light up! He'll look better in the dark.
I'll have to post later photos of him with his new paint job too. I'm going to repaint his markings to look more realistic.

3 comments:

el pancake said...

wow!...what a workhorse!!..good work!!

Suzanne Dargie said...

I have an obsession with Hallowe'en props!

Unknown said...

I really like the eyes shadows, because i love to see my eyes outstanding and seductive and my face look totally diferent. So when i make up very well is sure the boy must to buy viagra because i am very ardous.