EL Wire (Electroluminescent, Neon String, Glow Wire) - Halloween Ideas

Last Updated: 01/12/2003

Electroluminescent wire or EL Wire is something new I used this year. I found some 6’ lengths of the wire with power inverted at Target on clearance ($5) and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try and use it for something.

I ended up using the wire as a “hang man’s” noose. I wrapped the wire around one of those cheap plastic skeletons and hung the skeleton by the neck on the basketball goal in front of the house. It looked great. I made sure I wrapped the neck of the skeleton several times so that is was apparent that the rope looked like a noose. The eerie glow of the rope itself really made for a neat looking prop.

Electroluminescent wire, (also known as "Neon String" or "Glow Wire"), is a wire that glows brightly, similar to a cold cathode or a neon. It is extremely flexible similar to rope lights, but much, much thinner and has a neon glow. The wire is sold in 2.3mm, 3.2mm, and 5mm thickness and with the proper power source its length can be as great as 600 ft.

Electroluminescent wire requires an inverter also known as a driver in order to illuminate the EL Wire to its full brightness levels. Although the EL Wire can be attached directly to an AC power source, it will only obtain a very low level of brightness without the aid of an inverter

Here is a poor picture of the “hang man” skeleton.

<insert picture here>

This year’s party was a Disco theme. I found a white leisure suit on E-bay and wore that at the party. To make things memorable, I used 6’ of the EL Wire in my pants.... yes, pants. I used a hot glue gun and glued the wire to my briefs, around the front and legs and in the back. The EL kits that I got from target came with 12 VDC inverters (with cigarette lighter plug). They sell “pocket” type inverters, but I didn’t have time to purchase one. So I used two 9 VDC batteries and used the “in-series” technique to link the two batteries together to get enough voltage to power the wire.  The batteries were connected to a small switch and the whole setup fit in my pocket.

With the white slacks, you could see a purple glow from my pants when the switch was turned on. I left the switch turn on for most of the party and got several comments when bending over... “what is that glow”. I quickly responded, it’s “Glow Member”.

See similar idea with the EL Wire suits below.