fear4electronics: Lamp with a Capacitive Proximity Sensor : Step 1 the physical design

I had been running this project in my "free" time starting this June 2015. Today is the first day I make time to report it.
Why a lamp?

Since long, I want to do something special for my niece. She is 7 years old, and at the moment she still prefers to fall to sleep with some light. Hence, I decide to make her a special lamp for her.

The first stop is the idea. What do I want?

My idea is to let her turn the lamp with just approaching her hand to it. Also, I want the lamp to be personalized with her name. So, with these wishes in my mind, I created the following concept:

It is simple:

a) I want the lamp to turn on once a hand approaches the surface.

To achieve this I will utilize conductive ink and the lilipad (adrudino) to turn the light on.

b) I want the lamp made of glass. Additionally, I want that after the lamp is off again, it keeps illuminated. For this effect I decided to use phosphorescent paint. Therefore, after the lamp is used, it should keep light for some time.

Thus in this project I combine different technologies:

conductive ink
phosphorescent paint and
lilypads.

I will explain each step by posts. But now in this this post I will explain the physical design.

Step 1: Materials

- 1 jar or glass. This will be the lamp perse.

- phosphorescent pain

- pincel to apply all (no picture)

- conductive pain

- masking tape (no picture)

Step 2: Handicraft deign (visuals)

For this lamp, I want the name of my niece in big. To save conductive paint, I decided that her name is the area painted with conductive paint. The rest of the area is the phosphorescent paint.
First I wrote the name outside the jar with the masking tape to serve as a guide. Follow, I paint the letters inside the glass follow the conductive paint.

It is important to notice that all the letters are connected between each other. Meaning, all the black area is one complete piece of conductive paint.