What to do with those old slides? Instead of storing them, why not bring them out as decorative lights in your home?
The slide light we found on Shiny Shiny, resembles a long light box, where you can showcase your slides and create ambient light. Unfortunately, it's only available in the UK and is by no means inexpensive. A 2 foot light cost around $200.
Since this was out of reach (both financially and physically), we started dreaming up a DIY solution. The easy answer...buy a light box and mount that to your wall. We found a $100 version at Light Impressions. The rectangular size doesn't allow for the same lighting effect, but a stellar presentation, nonetheless. As for getting the slides to stay put, we imagine double-stick tape on the mounts would suffice. And if you're concerned about dust, a plexiglass cover cut to the same size would be an easy solution.
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Just remember that displaying them like this will shorten their useful life.
I'd recommend making cheap dupes and displaying only the dupes.
If you want a thin, sleek light box, Blick art supplies carries minimalist-modern looking ones for under $75.
http://www.dickblick.com/zz553/30/
For a little more you can go huge (18x24), still with a modern look.
http://www.displays2go.com/product.ccfl.asp?ID=6996
If you do this, have your lab dupe your slides onto one roll of film and tell then not to cut or mount the slides.
Then you can display the duped slides as a film-strip which would look cool.
For added punch, have them make the dupes on medium format, or even 4x5 or 8x10 transparencies since you have a big enough surface.
Dupes of 35mm slides are less than a buck each, I haven't priced the other formats in a few years.
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This company will ship the Slide Light to the US :
http://www.prezzybox.com/products/index.aspx?pid=1372
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Or if you really want yo be creative, and you do get the 18x24 lightbox, use Photoshop to make a collage- or anything else, and have the lab output the Photoshop file onto Duratrans. That way you have unlimited creative possibilities and you only have to mount one transparency to the lightbox as opposed to several. Just a thought.
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Great ideas, especially getting dupes instead of exposing your slides to the elements. Thanks for the tips boomer!
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Sometimes I miss shooting slide film and using a 4 foot lightbox to sort the slides. I don't miss the expense though. I still have thousands of slides stored in archival slide pages...
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You can buy window cling printer paper. What about creating a collage in Photoshop as described in another comment, printing it on window cling paper and using it to cover up unsightly views?
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