LED carnival Mask masque masquerade carnival masked ball

Wow! I can not believe it's been about five months since my last post, where does all that time go?

I have been doing lots of craft fairs this year and my last one was at The National Space Centre for the Creator Fair weekend.

It was great meeting lots of people and one of the stalls there was run by Kitronik!    http://www.kitronik.co.uk

They introduced me to their E-Textiles & Conductive Thread which is amazing as you can sew LED lights into textiles such as handbags, clothing and toys.

I was really tempted and treated myself to their Electro-Fashion Deluxe E-Textiles Pack £14.95
 https://www.kitronik.co.uk/2728-electro-fashion-deluxe-e-textiles-pack.html but was still unsure how I could incorporate the lights into one of my masks.

I was very kindly sent a sample box as I had chatted with the guys from Kitronik and expressed an interest in using their product in some way on one of my masks.

Well...after a bit of thought I decided to add some lights to a butterfly that would be the focal of a gold masquerade mask with fluffy feathers.

I was going to use three lights but realised this would be a bit of a squash on the back of the butterfly and the thread might touch causing the lights not to work.

 After I pierced the holes in the ends of each wing, I chose my needle, not too thick but not so thin either as the thread is quite thick, it is suggested that you thread your needle with the aid of a needle threader as it is made up of several strands and frays out quite quickly, Also ...this is so much easier than trying to just push the thread through the eye of the needle.

I attached the small coin cell holder to the bottom part of the wing with the conductive thread...
  making sure that I went through the holes at least half a dozen times as this gives the lights a good strong connection once the battery is added.

I then carefully stitched along the pattern of the butterfly so that the conductive thread wouldn't intrude too much on the design side. I sewed through the negative hole of the LED that I had earlier curled into small hoops with my round nose pliers once again going through several times and then continued to stitch across the butterfly until I reached the negative hoop of the opposite LED.

After placing a small square of sticky backed felt carefully over the negative connection, I then sewed in the same way again but joining the positives together. I put the felt over the thread as I knew the positive thread was going to touch the negative side and this would mean the lights not working.

 

 

The coin cell battery was placed into the holder and I was very pleased with the effect.

Once I had finished the mask I attached the butterfly to the side amongst the feathers and WOW!

 

 I love it!

 

 

The battery is easily accessible and should last long enough for an evening at a  Masquerade Ball!

 

Please visit Kitronik's website and take a look at the Electro-fashion E-Textiles.

You can find them on Facebook and Twitter too!

 https://www.kitronik.co.uk/