The back of the dolphins — where all the resistors and LED leads are soldered together — gets kind of hectic. Make sure that if a lead gets bent in the course of putting it on the plywood that it doesn’t short. Rather than using electrical tape, we used liquid electrical tape to coat the exposed leads.

For a mounting surface, we used 1⁄4" sheet plywood as the best bet. We tried using PVC (a kind of plastic) sheets, but they weren’t rigid enough to support  the display. We won’t kid you: Stringing the LED and resistor arrays takes some time and patience. There is no real shortcut to offer you here! We recommend that you solder the resistors to the LED leads first and then attach and solder either the red or black wires. If you try to attach all the wires before you solder, some will get in the way of your soldering iron.

You can use any artwork you like to create the images of your choice. We found a simple clip art drawing of a dolphin, printed it, copied and enlarged it, and used that as our stencil. We tipped the stencil at different angles across the plywood, creating a feeling of movement. However, you can use any graphic for your template as long as you avoid using anything so complex that people can’t make it out by looking at a simple outline of lights.