Shooting star sample 3 is for those who might not had a Christmas tree to attach it to or can't run it to the ground. This version can be fun, because once your star hits the other tree, you can have a number of strobes go off.

How to Make a Shooting Star

This Star was made by Christmas Done Bright. I had to add the eyelets because I did not know that I needed them when I first started. The eyelets should be placed in the same position, so all the Stars are leaning at the same angle.

The Stars are 3' tall and takes a little over 10' of rope light to go around the Star, then you have to cut 3 pieces for 18" lengths of rope light. I used Chuck Smiths (Click Here) method of connecting shorter lengths of rope light to the rest of the star, so I would not have more then one plug. I used Frosted white rope light from ActionLighting.com.

Each Star has to have a power cord coming from it going to your light controller. I made a wiring harness before I installed my stars. If you know the total distance from your beginning star to you final star, then you can lay all your stars out on the ground and build a wiring harness before you install them in the sky :). In the picture you can see some zip ties, these are reusable ties. I tape these to the wiring harness every 2 feet, so I could loosely attach the harness to the cable.

In my case I decide to feed the stars from the roof to the top of the tree. When I installed the cable that held the stars I ran a piece of rope with it so I could tie it to the stars and pull them up. Once I got up on my house and start feeding the stars up to the top of the tree I ran in to problems. First I tried to use pulleys and they would get in a bind when they got half way up. Each time you add a star it gets harder to pull them up. One of the reasons they got in a bind was partly because I used a cable that was plastic coated.

I got rid of the pulleys and used double clips, then I tied a piece of string between the two clips to keep them from leaning and getting into a bind. I still had a problem with the metal on plastic coated cable, so I got a some plastic and cut it into strips and then dipped it into oil and slide it under the double clips. This took care of all my problems and the Stars went straight up without a problem.

Next time I will probably welded a pulley on to each end of a rod and then clip the star on to it. If you do something similar, keep in mind that the pulleys have to go one before you have the cable that holds your stars installed