29 December 2014

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The History of Icicle Lights


The beauty created from the sun illuminating the frozen water left behind during the winter season can now be enjoyed indoors by hanging icicle lights this holiday season. Whether one’s winter wonderland desires are more eccentric and desire shining artificial ice creations to gleam purple and pink through the holiday night, or prefer the natural glow of real ice, all these needs can be met with the huge selection of bulbs available in different styles.

The use of lighting has been employed as one of the most extravagant areas of holiday decorations for many decades. However, it was not until the 1990’s that this style of lamps joined the other available decorations.

Juanita Donica is one of the two women who can be accredited with the wide-spread development of these ice lanterns. During the 1990’s Juanita Donica left her position at the local post office to go into business with her daughter, Diane Syme.

Together it was the goal of this mother and daughter team to open a gift and gourmet food shop in New Castle, Indiana. The two desired a holiday selling gimmick to set their shop apart from the competition.

After several hours of work and the employed use of normal shop supplies, the two had strung cords of different Christmas bulbs together to create icicle style lamp fixtures. Borrowing from the tale of the upside down Christmas tree, when customers shopped, it was the homemade decorations created by the mother and daughter that were the most widely desired by their patrons.

This huge burst of accidental popularity would lead to Juanita Donica and Diane Syme receiving a patent for the product known as “Light Cicles” in 1996. By the late nineties sales were estimated at four hundred-eighty million dollars annually, and the designs of these ice-structure lanterns sky rocketed, leaving customers with almost every style of bulb to be desired.

One available style is the transcendental icicle lights. This is the design considered most closely similar to the original that was created, which are characterized by commercial grade transcendental bulbs featuring clips to hold bulbs down for a more structured and realistic look.Another type of icicle lights that has gained in popularity use LED bulbs to illuminate them.

Some companies replaced old designs with updated versions employing LED bulbs in an attempt to better illuminate where possible, and to also keep new designs as energy efficient as possible. Besides a customer being able to select the style of bulb, there are many more design options available, such as the use of green or white wire.

This is helpful in keeping the strand from showing when decorating with them. When shopping one will notice that they can choose from a wide variety of bulb colors when purchasing these strands, such as amber, yellow, pink, blue, green, and many more.

However the possibilities do not stop there, if one feels their home or office building is lacking holiday spirit they can always opt to purchase a four-hundred bulb sheet of icicle lights. With deals available from single bulbs to bundles of three-hundred, anyone’s needs can be met by purchasing icicle lights online. 

 Submitted by: Dominik Hussl


About Today's Contributor: 
Christmas Decorations & Gifts Store is an expert in christmas decorations , icicle lights and nutcrackers

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