Continuing the tradition of making more than one item for Desert Bus, I also made a new copy of my Enchanted Rose. It's a straight reproduction of the last one I made for my wife last year. This is replica of the enchanted rose from the Disney animated film Beauty and the Beast. In the movie, the rose and the prince have a spell cast over them. The prince is cursed to live as a beast unless he can learn to love before the magic in the rose fades. To replicate the rose's glistening, programmable light effects are embedded into the replica's rose and underneath the petals. The rose shines constantly, and the petals twinkle to show the magic fading. The lights are powered by a usb cable. The prop is built around a glass dome with a wood base. The topper and golden base are made with 3d printed plastic and coated with an epoxy resin. The rose flower and petals are also 3D printed, but with transparent red PLA plastic. The rose stem is made of dyed plastic printed from Shapeways. The light effects use 5 LEDs powered by an Arduino Gemma microcontroller.
You can see the wiring and assembly here. It's simple, but it gets the job done. I prefer to use microcontrollers in projects like these so that I can use USB cords and not have to worry about batteries.
And here's the finished prop. It will be auctioned off in November during Desert Bus.
