I made a magical mermaid fairy fantasy castle out of recycled bottles. I am absolutely in love with it.
Here’s a link to the build tutorial at Adafruit Learn System: https://learn.adafruit.com/glowing-bottle-castle-and-capacitive-touch-piano
The bottles are sitting on top of a diy light box with a NeoPixel strip inside, so they glow. SO PRETTY…
But it gets even better. Each bottle is topped with a capacitive touch-enabled clay “roof”. When the bottle is touched it lights up and plays a note that sounds like someone is blowing across the bottle’s neck. It sounds so pretty!
The design was inspired by a visit to Barcelona in February where I got to tour a whole lot of buildings by Antoni Gaudi, who is my favorite architect of all time. His designs are organic and curvy and absolutely beautiful. The light inside La Sagrada Familia, his masterwork church, touched me so deeply that I just burst into tears as soon as I got inside. I wanted the light colors in this castle to remind me of the sun slanting through the stained glass windows in the sanctuary.
The vinyl stickers on the bottles are inspired by the windows inside Casa Batllo. I created the design from a photo I took during the tour from the inside of the building. This makes me unreasonably happy.
The toppers on the bottles are inspired from a stroll around Park Guell.
This castle lives on my windowsill and am so delighted to get to look at it every day.
