If I’m cooking up a new project these days, there is a pretty good chance that EL Wire is going to be involved.  It’s extremely versatile, easy to work with, and relatively inexpensive, making it the perfect choice for lighting up just about anything.

Electroluminescent wire, or EL Wire, is a thin copper wire coated in a phosphor which glows when an AC Current is applied to it.  The light produced can be compared to that of a neon sign.  The wire itself is very flexible and produces little heat making it a very versatile.  It can be used in a wide variety of applications such as toys, clothing, vehicles, signs and structure decoration.

In order to use EL Wire, 3 main components are needed.  The Wire, an inverter (or driver), and a power source.    Typically your power source is going to be a battery, which provides the benefit of not restricting your EL Wire to being plugged into a socket.  The inverter is then used to convert from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC).  Different sized inverters can be used depending on how much EL Wire you wish to light up and how bright you want the wire to glow.  To light up EL Wire, you just need to solder the wire to the inverter and provide power.  For those who aren’t as handy with a soldering iron you can buy pre-soldered wire, though I would highly recommend learning to solder it yourself as its pretty simple, less expensive, and allows you much more flexibility with your projects.  For a good tutorial on soldering EL Wire check out this article from NeonString.com.

I typically secure EL Wire to my projects in one of two ways , by hot gluing it or sewing it.  Hot glue is a great option for securing EL Wire to most hard surfaces, and because EL Wire doesn’t produce much heat, you don’t need to worry about the glue melting.  The process of hot gluing is easy, and pretty self explanatory, unfortunately it doesn’t really work as well with fabrics.   For fabrics you are going to want to sew the EL Wire, which can be a little bit more of a hassle, but still isnt’ too difficult.  For a quick lesson how sewing EL Wire into fabrics check out this tutorial from instructables.

Now that you know all about EL Wire, you are probably asking yourself, what should I light up?  To give you some ideas, here are a few things I’ve used it for recently

• My backpack
• My shoes
• My bike
• Various different hats
• Toys I’ve created
• To create a custom neon sign

I will warn you, if you are a glow-junky like me,  this stuff can be addicting.  I originally bought a little just to light up my backpack, and have since been lighting up just about anything I can get my hands on.  The only thing stopping me is running out of wire and inverters.  My suggestion to you is to order a bunch, and the ideas will start flowing once you start using it.

The last thing you’ll want to know is where to get the EL Wire and inverters.  I’ve always ordered mine from the same place, WorldaGlow.com.  My rational for doing so is that they appear to have the best prices I can find anywhere, and I’ve been happy with the quality of their products.  That being said, a couple of the times I’ve used them (including my last time), the shipping has been really slow.  I’m thinking about using another vendor next time to compare the quality of the products and service.  I’ll update this post when I do, in the meantime, if anyone has had a positive experience with a different vendor please comment below. (If you are going to go ahead and use WorldAGlow.com, use the coupon code “burner” at checkout for a 10% discount).

So that should be all the info you need to get out there and start lighting it up.  Check out the links below for tutorials and vendors.  For those who have had experience with EL Wire, please share it.  And for those getting ready for their first project, good luck, let us know how it goes.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them or email me doc@docstoyland.com.

EL Wire Tutorials

• How To Solder EL Wire from NeonString.com
• How to Sew EL Wire into Garmets from Instructables

Vendors

• WolrdAGlow.com (use coupn code “burner”)
• NeonString.com
• CoolLight.com