Wire frames

[1tnvol]

I'm redoing a bunch of wireframes I inherited.  I'm going back with white leds and was wondering has anyone ever used alcohol paint to color the bulbs? If anyone has a better suggestion please let me know...thanks in advance 

[chuck]

Krylon used to make a special spray paint just for glass.  Pricey, took forever to dry but and you got a translucent color on minilights. 

But... one year I was out of the special glass paint and I used regular spray paint.  Much cheaper and dried quick.  The color wasn't translucent but everything looked fine when the bulbs were lit.  Never went back to the official glass paint.

[Kulpy]

I don't paint, I use these clips they are great, https://christmas-leds.com/product/m5-combo-clips-for-old-style-led-m5-mini-lights/ They are made so you can clip right on the wireframes. That is if your wireframes are 1/4".

[1tnvol]

Thanks Chuck, I'll experiment some with this..and thanks Kulpy..I got the sample pack from them, but found they won't fit my lights that have the lock on the side

[sparkles]

You know. I never thought to spray paint the lights. That's a good idea!

What do you do for the lights where the paint starts to come off? So instead of looking, say blue, some of the bulbs are looking whitish. Do you spray paint over all of them? Some of them?

[Rich in Las Vegas]

It is probably not a good idea to paint over any bulbs that are already flaking.  The paint may adhere to the parts that have already flaked but you soon may have new areas flaking due to the loose paint you painted over. 

It's one advantage of using newer LED light strings.  The color is either in the plastic envelope around the LED or is in the emitting color of the LEDs.  There is no paint to flake.  It's far easier to use white LEDs in colored plastic since all LEDs in the string will have the same operating voltage.   Red emitting LEDs use the lowest voltage (around 1.8V) while white LEDs are around 3V with the other colors in-between.   It makes it more difficult to make arrangements that use more than one color.

[nipster]

How time consuming is this, I have a bunch of incandescents i've just let be, these are literally the only things in my display that aren't LED except a handful of incandescent C7 flasher bulbs

[Rich in Las Vegas]

You are right that it is very time consuming to replace incandescent bulbs but sometimes the incandescent bulbs burn out and it is going to be very difficult to find which single bulb to replace.   You can get some LED strings and replace the incandescent strings with LED strings once and for all.  They  will last for years as I have some strings made more than 15 years ago still going strong.  Here is an alternative I did where the light is provided by a central core. 

 

I have a couple of older fabric covered wiremolds that came with incandescent lights. Here are some pictures before explanation so it makes more sense:

spiral wound lights used inside of the small Santa climbing out of chimney

Same but closer view of mounting base

Underside of PVC coupling

 

fabric snowman to the right side of picture  (has similar spiral wound lights base to hat

fabric snowman lit at night

 

small wireframe with lowest level lit with spiral LEDs at beginning  - Santa climbing out of chimney (left of small blue spiral trees)

 

Some were too difficult to get inside in order to re-lamp with LED string lights or came apart in segments like the large fabric snowman so could not be disassembled again once the lights were installed. Instead, I used a lit central core made from LED strip lights wound around a 3.4” PVC irrigation pipe available at any Home Depot or Lowe's. At the base, I use a regular PVC coupler ($.41) with one end stuffed with cardboard circles held in place with waterproof glue such as Locktite Power Grab construction adhesive or even Elmer's glue. I drill a small hole in the center of the cardboard and use an ordinary screw to hold it to a chloroplast base. Because I have desert landscaping underlain with weed-proof landscape fabric I can't anchor anything using stakes. The chloroplast base is larger than the base of the wiremold so gets covered with stone to keep it in place.

The strip LEDs shown are inexpensive. You can increase or decrease the, lumen output by winding the strips in spiral form closer together or farther apart. If you want color, buy RGB LED strips and connect the color you need or use an inexpensive basic controller for changing colors and flashing modes. There are several types of strip lights I used. The least lumen output comes from SMD 3528 LED strips (used here) where the 35 and 28 are the dimensions of the individual LEDs in mm. You can get other sizes such as 5050 and 5630 which are brighter. My last purchase of cool white 3528 strip cost $3.75 for a 16 foot strip with 300 LEDs. A 16 foot of 5050 LEDs in red/green/blue (RGB) purchased at the same time was $4.50. You can get away with using non-waterproof strips even in wet areas. Mine operate on 12V DC from a DC power supply in my garage so are not the hazard compared to using house voltage AC.