Creating Your Own Makeshift Light Box

If you’re doing a lot of craft, then you will come across the need every now and then to do some tracing.

Yes you can do the whole hold it up to the window trick, but when you’re doing a lot of tracing, a light box is ideal. The problem is that commercial light boxes cost an absolute fortune, so here is a way to create a makeshift light box for free.

I actually got this idea from a wonderful little quilting blog I came across months ago, but I can’t for the life of me find it again, so I apologise for not crediting the blog and providing a link. If I find it, I’ll add it in.

What you need to create your own light box is a drawer, a desk lamp and some glass or Perspex. Place the desk lamp in the drawer lying down (light face up), balance the Perspex on the drawer edge and table edge, turn on the light and trace away.

I didn’t have any Perspex lying around, so instead I used a picture frame and simply removed the picture. The great thing is that you don’t need to store Perspex this way, you just hang your picture back up. And the frame helps keep the glass in place.

A desk lamp with a small LED bulb works better than a lamp with a larger bulb. I found that the glass would heat up to the point that my fingers would burn, and I was worried the glass would break with the heat. The LED lamp didn’t heat the glass. If you use a lamp with a regular sized light bulb beware that it will heat the glass pretty quickly and make it pretty hot.