Reused Cardboard Transforms into Versatile LED Desk Lamp

Anything that can be made from recycled materials always catches my eye, especially these days. My nonprofit organization, RuckusRoots, is currently running a recycled art program called TRASHformation at Nightingale Middle School in Los Angeles. We are constantly looking for new ideas, and so I was thrilled to spot this inventive and very eco-friendly DIY lamp, created by Instructables member Jesse Harrington Au.

LED lights home

Jesse used a CAD program called Autodesk Inventor 2012 to sketch out a 3D rendering of what he wanted his lamp to look like. He then used a laser cutter to cut flat pieces of cardboard into shapes that he glued together to form the 3-dimensional lamp. (Here are the full instructions.)

LED lights home

Once he affixed all of the pieces (using plain old Elmer’s white glue), Jesse drilled a hole in the back of the lamp and fed a small piece of spiraled LED strip through the hole. Cool-running LED strip lights are perfect for a cardboard lamp like this one, as they don’t get hot enough to create a fire hazard. This nifty LED lights home and office spaces just as well as any store bought lamp world, and adds a fun, fresh DIY feel to any room. I will definitely show this lamp to the kids I’m working with this week. Though we won’t be using a laser cutter, it’s a good example of one way to create a 3-dimensional shape using flat materials. We have collected a lot of thrown away cardboard on campus, which is waiting to be turned into something cool. Stay tuned!