The sun jar is a pretty cool item. I mean, it glows, looks cool, and it’s a solar powered light. I actually have one of these I bought for my son to use as a nightlight. We even covered these about a month ago — there’s a site in the UK that sells them from about $33 US, plus shipping.
So you don’t want to spend the money to have one shipped from the UK? Build one yourself. Lifehacker posted a set of instructions for converting a solar powered lawn light into a jar, and it looks pretty easy to do.
All the parts to build one will cost you about $45 (slightly more than the other one, oops), but when you’re done you’ll end up with a pretty neat light. If you build one, post a picture of it here, I’d like to see what you come up with.
Update:My bad. The original article does say that you can get the parts to make your own for about $11 each. Now it’s an even better deal!
It says on the Lifehacker website that the $44 is the cost to make all four! So they are a lot cheaper at $11 each!!
That looks nice.
$45 builds 4!!
I’ve made this with two different types of solar light (both times, new parts). Both attempts yielded light jars that only worked for a few days b/c the inability to recharge the jars effectively when placed in the windowsill. The tops of the jars is both think and not conducive for direct transmission of the light toward the solar cells.
The project will work, but be prepared to do some intense, outside, direct-sun recharging to keep your jars working.
A warning on the build, if you use superglue to attach the panel to the top of the jar, make sure to leave the jar open for a few days for the glue to fully cure. I closed up the jars and a vaporized superglue film coated the solar panels. I used hot–glue on the second round and found it to be much easier to work with, too.
I actually bough some cheap solar lights a while back with the intention of butchering them for some sort of project and never got around to it, now I know what I’ll do with them!