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Hi! Maria here from Creativity Hero
channel. In this video I will show you how I made an exploding Sun lamp out of
Styrofoam and optical fibers. The lamp might seem a bit complicated at first
glance, but it is actually very simple project that can be done in a day. Also
it requires just a few basic tools that everyone has at home, so I encourage you
to follow my instructions and make your own outstanding peace of art. Now let's
get started! For this project I used a Styrofoam sphere with 20 centimeters
diameter.

It consists of two halves, which is exactly what I need. This socket needs
to be placed in the center of one half of the sphere, hence I need to make a
hole to fit it in. The diameter of the socket is around 40 millimeters, but I
couldn't use the socket itself to draw a circle because it is bell shaped, and it
is much wider on the end. Luckily, the electrical tape that I have
has exactly 40 millimeters diameter so I took it to outline the circle. The
opening I made with the utility knife which works pretty well on Styrofoam. I
tried to follow the line very carefully, making sure I don't remove more than I
needed. The opening perfectly fits the socket and now I can move on to the next
step.

Here I have around 100 meters of optical fibers that need to be inserted
into the sphere. But first I'll use a medical needle to make tiny holes into
the Styrofoam. In order to be able to insert the fibers easily I made as many
holes as possible on both halves of the sphere. The hub of the needle served as a
handle, thus it was very easy to make those holes. Be sure to check out the
video description where you can find links to all the tools and materials
needed for this project. Once I'm done with the holes, I need to
attach magnets to the sphere, to keep the two halves together. Instead glue, I
decided to use magnets because that way I can easily remove one half of the
sphere and replace the bulb if needed. I have for now Neodymium magnets with size 20 by 10 by 4 millimeters. They are pretty large, so I'll attach them
vertically, which means they'll attract each other with the smallest surface of
10 by 4 millimeters. The neodymium magnets are very strong and they'll hold
the two halves together pretty well.

To attach the magnets onto the Styrofoam
I used 5 min epoxy. But if you choose different type of glue, you might
want to test it first, because it can melt or dissolve the Styrofoam. Also, when gluing the magnets make sure they attract each other on both sides. Now it
is time to make the sphere more vibrant by adding some color to it.
At first I wanted to spray-paint the sphere, but after spraying a scrap piece
of Styrofoam, I noticed that it started to melt.

That's why I went with acrylic
paint, and combined white as a primary color with a few drops of yellow and red
tint in order to get a color that will remind of the Sun. While the paint was drying, I continued
with the optical fibers. I cut different lengths of the fibers with scissors. The
shortest are 5 centimeters, and the longest are around 60 centimeters.
This will actually give the effect of explosion of the Sun. Before I started
inserting the fibers, I noticed that I actually needed more holes into the foam,
therefore I took the needle and made a bunch of other random holes. This
additional step didn't affect the color at all. Now I can move on to the most
time-consuming part of the project, which is inserting the fibers into the holes. This type of optical fibers perfectly transmits to light from one end of the
fiber to the other. It took me around 2 hours to finish this step. To keep the fibers in place, I applied
hot glue onto the fibers inside the sphere.
I used toothpicks to apply a small amount of hot glue on each fiber.

This
also gave the hot glue time to cool down just a little,
because when applied directly it melds the fibers. You need to be very careful
here and avoid applying glue directly onto the end of the fiber, since you
don't want to prevent the light transmission. Next, I moved on to the
socket. I cut around 20 centimeters cable and removed 2 centimeters of the
jacket with a utility knife. I used wire strippers to remove the insulation off
of the ends of the wires. Then, I attached the wires into the socket interior and
screwed on the shell. I chose warm white LED light bulb. It is
very important to use LED bulb because it produces very small amount of heat.
Now that I am done assembling the parts, I can mount it onto the ceiling. Finally,
I can attach the other half of the sphere, turn the light on and enjoy the
mesmerizing beauty of the lamp. This is very simple and unique project which can
be used both indoors and outdoors.

There are no limits on how you can make this
lamp: you can use larger or smaller sphere, you can add more optical fibers,
you can even change the color of the sphere and the lights, it's all up to
you. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you do,
give me a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comment section below.
Also, subscribe to my channel and hit the notifications build to never miss
another video.

Bye and see you in the next one!.