fallen off the wagon, again

uppitt

uppitt

Apprentice elf
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
63
I'm not a new member, but I feel like it every year. I never seem to progress from my static display, well other then adding to my static display. However I always seem to fall off the wagon this time of year when my CLAP relapses, funny that. And then I find myself here which then makes my problem worse ;o) This year is worse then others, where I've been so busy, that I've not had any time to even think about Christmas lights. I have a vast stock of static lights, my wife is a fan of candy canes, so I've just ordered another 10 canes to add to my existing number. I have lights I never quite finished rolling out last year. I have alot of old 240v style motifs that are slowly dying and fading. I have to get my lights out for this year, my kids will be so disappointed if I don't. And maybe for next year, I might have to start looking at a controlled display and see what I can modify with my existing stock. Oh so much to do and so little time.

Glad to see you guys doing your displays each year, I love the inspiration.

Tim

P.S. [attachimg=1]and just a pic of some of my display..I did a little creation of my own last year and filled all the windows with lights
 
more like 1 day before December 2013 !! and my garden is a weed fest, my garage is a mess. Going to be another massive effort to get it all done (again).
 
You can ease into it by taking small steps.

For example, convert some of your existing light sets to use centralised DC controllers and power. At least then you can get rid of all the MFC (multi-function controllers) and have better control over them.

I modify all the 24V AC lights I get from Deals Direct, etc so they run from controllers (for animation) and a 30V DC power supply. I don't sequence to music and am happy with the simple animations I can create with LOR software.

It depends on what you have already of course, but there's plenty of help available here. :)
 
Don't worry about the garden - you won't see the weeds at night. The garage can be worked on slowly while getting the lights out.

I think that static display looks pretty good - a heap more "fill" than my display and I've found that even with random MFC effects you can get some amazing colours going. Kids still love it!

As David said - just work on small bits and ease into it. Once I looked at animation I started getting lights that could be converted later when I got around to it. Pick one element and just animate that perhaps(eg roofline and gutters or some form of tree)......

Cheers!
 
Well we hacked into the garden today. All day wife and I ripped out weeds and and bushes that had had their time (now more room for lights). 3x120l vege bins filled and 4wd packed to the roof with garden waste. 6m3 of new leaf mulch getting delivered in the morning. We can't not spruce up the garden as we invite people to walk through at night, and with so many lights, you see everything. Anyway the ball is rolling. Next step is making some room in the garage to start unpacking lights.

For next year I will have to look at the best ways to mod what I have. The 240v motifs I don't expect I can do anything with, I have 20 strings from bigw, and been buying some led light rope from deals direct. A lot of stuff is 24v, or 30v from bigw, so expect I can mod most stuff. I'll post some photos when it's all done.
Our property is a sloping block, so the frontage is quite long and really helps show the lights off. I used to fill the roof with lights, but most of that real estate is taken up with panels. Better anyway as I always had issues with stuff falling over on the roof.




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Forgot to add, even though we have a static display, we do try to have themes in different parts of the garden. So it's not just a sea of random lights thrown out everywhere. We line the long pathway with candy canes, we line the boundary with rope light, we mount stars on our massive aerial on the roof, and wrap strings around most tree branches. Motifs are the only things that get thrown around in places to fill gaps.


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