Adafruit is celebrating Lunar New Year 🐍 Wednesday 1/29/2025. In combination with MLKDay, shipping could be delayed. Please allow extra time for your order to ship!
John Park’s Electroluminescent Wearables @adafruit @johnedgarpark #ElectronicHalloween
Glow time! Make a last-minute costume by taping EL wire, tape, and panels to your skin with medical Tegaderm tape. In this video, John Park makes electroluminescent tape sleeves and a mask and hand-mounted Circuit Playgrounds by following this great tip by @realSexyCyborg on using Tegaderm tape to affix wearable electronics to your skin – https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/09/15/realsexycyborg-make-wearables-more-wearable-with-tegaderm-adafruit-adafruit/
When using EL wire, you can tape it directly to your skin. For EL tape and panels it’s best to first sandwich it between strips of the tape to prevent the exposed edges from touching the skin.
Cut the tape to size, remove the paper backing, tape the electronics to your skin, and then remove the protective plastic from the tape.
Here I’ve placed a JST extension cable to power a Circuit Playground under the EL tape.
The mask was created by simply tracing out a pattern and cutting an EL panel with scissors, then laminating it in the medical tape to protect the edges.
You can see from the video that this is much easier with the help of a friend to apply the tape and electronics to those hard-to-reach places. This is a fun way to create a great light effect — you could even apply all over the body and cover up with a thin bodysuit for an under-costume glow. Again, thank you to @realSexyCybord for pioneering this technique.
Special thanks to Joel Reid for photography and costuming.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
