I don’t know about you, but I needed a Winter Sanity Survival Plan this year more than ever.
One thing I wanted to try this year was a light – they go by different names, but generically they are referred to as Light Therapy Lamps. The theory is by using this special lamp in the morning that emits a particular color and strength of light you can “trick” your brain into not realizing it is the dark depths of winter.
There is some science to back it up, and it wasn’t expensive, and as long as you don’t look right into it there shouldn’t be any negative side effects (important note – I am not a doctor. I am not dispensing medical advice!), so I figure if I get a placebo or real cure for my winter time blahs it’s worth a try.
The only problem with the plan was the light I purchased for some reason had a power button that was super visible in the dark. It glowed a greenish white, and even if I turned the light to face the wall at night, it caused the wall to glow. So ironically, I was attempting to improve my alertness during the day while killing my sleep at night.
Craft skills to the rescue! I decided to make a sticker to cover the power button, and the obvious choice was to make a happy face because that’s the goal – to be happier this gloomy winter.
A standard happy face is two colors – black and yellow. If you layer vinyl, you want to take a second and see which way is going to be best. If I had gone the traditional route of cutting the eyes and smile from black and adhering them to the yellow circle, I would have have three teeny tiny items that needed to be cut, weeded and moved.
But if I did the opposite – cut the eyes and smile OUT of a yellow vinyl circle and layer that onto a black circle so that shows through , it would be much much easier.
And in this case, even more helpful, because that stupid power button would have glowed right through the yellow vinyl. But it can’t be seen through the two layers!
