Make Dazzling Illuminated Costumes for Halloween

Light up costumes are creative ways to celebrate Halloween.Halloween is quickly approaching us and there's no time like the present to get started on your very own, extremely unique Halloween costume.

We're all familiar with the notion of getting a bedsheet, cutting out a couple holes for eyes and draping it over ourselves in a pinch. With a little more time you could light that costume up and dazzle friends, neighbors and fellow trick-or-treaters.

Cool Costumers with EL Wire

Electroluminescent wire (EL wire) is incredibly easy to work with and in great supply in the Bay Area, thanks to all our Burning Man friends. There is an excellent Instructables on creating glowing fairy wings out of EL Wire by SewLolita. Follow their instructions and you'll have a one of a kind creation to light up any fairy costume.

If fairies aren't your thing, consider making a TRON costume, outlining the edges of the costume in EL Wire and voila, you've created a TRON outfit.

Check out Cool Neon, a Bay Area company that specializes in EL wire, and all kinds of things that light up. They have an online store and you can also pick up from there warehouse in the East Bay. Furthermore, they have a great guide to soldering with EL wire that is indispensable if this is your first time soldering.

Light up using LED's

Like EL wire, LED costumes allow you to stretch you imagination to create unique light shows and funky designs. You can build your own light saber, make all kinds of illuminated clothing and even turn yourself in a live fireworks display! Believe it or not, using an umbrella and programmable LED's you can do just that thanks to this Instructables from Chris Huebner.

Resources

Noisebridge offers their space to the public for free use of their equipment including soldering irons and sewing machines. Wednesday nights they host a sewing and craft night that welcomes anyone to come and work on a craft project and get help from others.

The Crucible is offering an EL Wire workshop on October 23rd to get you ready to create illuminated costumes.

Good luck with your Halloween costume and let us know what you're planning on making in the comments!

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