You see it was her birthday yesterday, and I got her a piece of Swarovski crystal as a present. An elephant. Don't ask me why someone would collect crystal; after all there's not much you can do with it. You can't drill holes with it or load games on it.
Anyway, she's been nagging me to put a light in her display cabinet to show off the crystal. So today I did it. I firstly tried LED lighting, but it wasn't bright enough. I had seen some nice lighting in the display cases at the Swarovski shop, but I couldn't get anything close from the lighting shops. We finally decided on a flat compact fluorescent light that would illuminate not only the crystal figures at the top, but the rest of the glassware as well.
The installation was tricky as well because the Parker furniture is very solid and the internals fit pretty tightly, and with all the glass and mirror around, you have to be careful not to shatter it with a misplaced drill bit. In the end I was able to find a 5mm space that I could drill a hole through to get the power in.
I also took the opportunity to try and photograph some of her Swarovski pieces in the cabinet. It was a lot harder than I thought and in hindsight I would have been better taking them outside the cabinet rather then through the glass doors. It's just that the crystal looks much better when directly illuminated.
I also found it hard to isolate one image from all the light reflections around it. Maybe it would be better isolating each one on a dark background. Maybe I'll try it again on some future rainy day.
Heaven knows what Karyn will do next. Probably use the new cabinet lighting as an excuse to buy some more crystal.
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