Here's another fast and fun project I've done recently - Jeans with decorative el-wires which glow at night. It is very festive and easy to make.
(Sorry for the horizontal video... I hate when people do that :P)
Last week I went to a music festival. I bought the tickets 3 days before and was thinking what can I bring with me. I didn't have enough time to built something big - Only one free evening until the festival. Then I remember my el-wires! I bought a bunch of them a while ago and haven't had the chance to use them yet.
What are el-wires (חוטימור)? Well, lets not get into the chemical details, but in general it is a flexible electrical wire which glows when connected to AC high voltage. To make an el-wire glow, you'll need:
- Wires - They come in many colors and they are not always as seems in the pictures. I recommend green and white for best glow.
- A connector - The wires usually come with a connector for easy use.
- An inverter - To power the el-wire one will most likely use batteries, USB or car-jack which means 3V-12V input. The inverter makes the output voltage around 100V at around 1000Hz, the voltage needed to light the wires. Don't worry about the dangerous high voltage - The current is so small it is not really dangerous.
When I first encountered el-wires I noticed it can really upgrade party-clothes, so I started by looking on YouTube videos of "how-to". In most of the videos I watched people did some great work and sewed the el-wire to their clothes. I didn't had the time to sew so I decided to try something else. Since I've used jeans I didn't care so much about, I decided to check how it goes with hot glue. It seems as hot glue is really good for jeans - not so good if you want to get it off after though.
So I started with gluing the wire to the jeans:
I choose to start from bottom so I can go over the entire jeans without the need to go back up and down. Notice you do not curve the el-wire too much, it can actually break and stop working, just feel it and don't put too much pressure:
Getting to the middle, I started again from the other bottom part of the jeans to make a symmetric design, and finally did some curves at the top of the jeans:
So far seems good:
But I wanted to add another color. In order to do that I had to use a connector splitter:
The splitter I had was "1 to 6" splitter. Unfortunately, I've noticed that when connecting more than two colors the "glow" diminishes pretty quickly. So I de-solder the splitter:
and connected back only "1 to 2" splitter. Also, I made it much longer so I can put the inverter in my pocket and connect the wires on the bottom of the jeans. Next, I glued a white el-wire and the jeans was almost ready:
Last, I made a small hole at the bottom of the jeans to put the connectors through
and a hole at the top of the jeans to put the wires from the inverter into the jeans.
DONE!
The entire project took about two hours and was fun to build. Also - was a big hit at the festival. Think I'm gonna order some more el-wires so I can ruin some more clothes at the next festival.
AA