LED Signs: Final Product

Hey Guys,
I created a few threads on these forums asking questions back in the fall when I got the idea to make some LED signs. I'm finished with them now and thought I'd share the end product with you guys, given that many of my questions were answered here. One was for my mother, it's a christmas tree mounted in back-to-back black picture frames. The other is for my girlfriend, and it says her name.
Unfortunately I didn't realize that the Blue and orange LEDs I got were ultrabright, as a result that sign is way too bright in person and you can't look straight at it (it's still pretty cool though). Below are pictures of the two:

EDIT: The pictures wouldn't embed in the post properly, here's a link to the gallery:
https://img199.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=img1966z.jpg

Very cool. The picture frame idea came out really nice. I hope you got Anne a pair of sunglasses to wear while looking at her present. FYI, you can dim the sign down by decreasing the supply voltage or by inreasing the value of the current limiting resistors.

What a good boyfriend/son your are.
Very nice work.

Ultra bright LED's are great. The reason is, you can get the same brightness out of them for half the current. (so to speak)
I bought some PLCC-2 LED's to use on some PCB's. They were high brightness, but as i was only using them as indicator LED's, I put large value resistors on them and they run below 1mA at perfect brightness.
Like vne147 suggested, increase the value of the resistors and you will get lower brightness.
You may even be able to run you frames off batteries for long periods if the current consumption is low.

But nice work (Y)

I notice that the blue LEDs appear bright because they have a very narrow angle (they are focussed straight ahead).
Next time use wide angle LEDs.