For whatever reason, I’ve always been intrigued by Jellyfish.  There is something about the way they gently swash through the ocean, their different sizes and vibrant colors.  Did you know that the turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish is the only immortal animal known to man?

So with this longstanding interest, you could imagine my excitement a couple years back find this instructable for an LED Jellyfish Costume.

The instructable was written by a member named deadinsect, and remains my favorite instructable to date.  I originally made my own Jellyfish helmet for Halloween in 2008, but later decided it would be fun to start taking it with with me festivals and shows.  I’ve probably worn it to around a dozen or so shows and as you can imagine it always garners a great deal of attention.   I even met another Jellyfish who had implemented the same instructable at Phish’s Festival 8.  I also made a little miniature jellyfish following the same process described in the instructable, just using a smaller bowl and EL Wire.

If anyone plans on building their own Jellyfish helmet and needs some advice, please feel free to contact me.  I can tell you where I found certain materials, or help with any questions you might have regarding the construction process.  Just leave a comment here, or shoot me an email.  And if anyone else out there has already built their own jellyfish costume or has seen one at a show/festival, please contact me, I’d love to hear from you

Links

• Jellyfish Helmet Instructable by deadinsect
• Video of deadinsect’s original jellyfish helmet
• Video of my eletro-jellyfish-man costume (Halloween 2008)
• Video of some jellies other’s made following the instructable

For New Years Eve my friends and I decided to head up to San Francisco for a party called Sea of Dreams.  It was the type of event where everyone dresses up, so a few weeks before the new year we all went to work on our costumes.  I decided to go classy and wear a full tuxedo, so I just needed to come up with a way to dress it up a bit.

What I ended up doing was buying an old tux from a thrift store and outlining the jacket with blue EL Wire.  At the same store I was able to find a pretty snazzy blue ruffled shirt to wear with it.  I had already ordered an LED walking cane online, so the final touch was my
hat.

The disco ball hat was an idea I’d been toying around with for a while.  It was a pretty simple idea.  I basically just attached a tiny motorized disco ball to the top of a hat.  To make things a little more interesting added an EL Badge to the front with musical notes, and I covered the hat with silver glitter.   Check out the video below.

Note that the lasers aren’t part of the hat; I just added them to show some of the cool things you could do with it.  I had thought about permanently adding lasers or LEDs but in the end, I liked the simplicity.  If you are interested in detailed instructions on how to make one, check out this insctructable I wrote for it.

Sea of Dream turned out to be a lot of fun.  Really great music and good vibes all around.  I’ll probably go back next year, and would definitely recommend checking it out to anyone who has the opportunity.

If anyone’s got a question about the outfit or Sea of Dreams, be sure to leave a comment, or send me an email, doc@docstoyland.com.

Firework glasses are a fun way to change the way you see everything around you.  They use defractive lenses to to split light before it reaches your eyes.  This creates the effect of turning a single light source into what appears to be light coming from many directions.  This will be easier for me to explain in the video below.

So you now you can see the effect they create, pretty cool huh?  Whenever I go to a show I usually toss a couple hundred of them in my backpack to give out.  Particularly shows with a lot of lasers or lights, it really adds to the experience.  Check out this video I took of Ghostland Observatory at Sea of Dreams, I put the glasses in front of the camera so you can see what it would be like to wear them at the show.

So the last question is where to get them.  You can find them various places online ranging from fifty cents to a couple of bucks.  If you are just buying a couple, it probably won’t matter where you get them.  However if you are like me, and want extras for your friends or just to give away, then saving even 10 cents a pair will really start to add up (I’ve already gone through thousands of them). By far the best prices I’ve found are at rainbow symphony.  You can find firework glasses there starting at 40 cents if you buy 50+.  Or if you really plan to buy a lot, you can buy overstocked glasses starting at 15 cents..  I typically buy 1000 overstocks at a time for 10 cents a pair, which allows me to go to shows and brighten people’s night at 10 cents a pop.   Is it weird when I hand people glasses that have an advertisement for some random fair in Oregon that happened a year ago?  Maybe a little, but I think most people rarely notice and are more concerned with the fact that when they put these things on their face starts melting.  Either way, I love seeing peoples reactions when they try them on for the first time.

So make sure to grab a pair for your next show, and maybe a few extras for all the new friends you are bound to make.

As always feel free to email me doc@docstoyland.com with any questions, or even better, ask them in the comment field below.

Whenever I’m at a show or festival I usually try to wear one of my EL Shirts at least one night.  They’ve been around for a few years now, yet most people have still never seen one and are always fascinated when they see my shirt light up.

EL T-Shirts rely on the same electroluminescent technology that allows EL-Wire to glow.  They were popularized a few years ago by the “T-Qualizer” pictured below.

However now these shirts are available with a wide variety of different symbols and patterns.  Just like EL-Wire, they require a battery pack/driver to power (typically powered by 4 AAA batteries).  Depending on the driver the lights on the shirt may blink or react to sound.  The sound sensitive shirts are my favorite as its fun to see them light up to music.

Washing these shirts needs to be done by hand, and can be a bit of a hassle, I’ve broken a shirt before by being careless with the washing.  Some shirts come with a Velcro detachable panel on the front, so you can detach the EL portion of the shirt and wash the fabric in a machine.  While this makes the washing process easier, I really prefer the sewn in look as the velcro panels stick out some and just don’t look as good.

I’ve listed some sites below where you can find EL Shirts, but I encourage you to shop around.  There are dozens of online stores that sell them, so it’s worth spending a little time looking around and finding the one that’s right for you.  Typically they run around $30-$35 so don’t pay too much more than that.

Have fun wearing one at your next event.  I can guarantee you’ll be getting a lot of attention.  And as always if you have any questions, please free to email me doc@docstoyland.com or post a comment below.

Online Stores that Sell EL Shirts

• http://www.dreamrave.com/elshirts-c-41.html
• http://www.bewild.com/ilmoansoret.html
• http://www.raveworx.com/Flashing-T-Shirts-c-312.html

When I’m at a show or festival, carrying a backpack is a must.  How else am I going to haul around my lasers, bubbles, camera, firework glasses, frisbee, glow sticks, gum, head lamp, batteries… you get the idea…

In my opinion, anything worth wearing that often is worth lighting up.  So I decided that lighting up my backpack was going to be my first EL Wire project.

To learn how best to sew the wire into my backpack I followed an instructable on sewing EL Wire into garments.   The most important thing I learned from the instructable was the importance of having a plan, and mapping out where the EL Wire would go before sewing it in.  I actually attached all of the wire to the backpack with pins before I began sewing.

All and all, I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out.  The back pack always receives a lot of compliments whenever I wear it and it also makes it easy for my friends to find me in a crowd.  If I were to do it over again (which I probably will), I would have added more wire to the center of the backpack, as apposed to just along the edges.  I also would have used two different colored wires side by aside, to make the effect more pronounced.

Please post any questions or comments you may have.  Or email me doc@docstoyland.com.  I’d love to hear about similar projects people have worked on.