Help with Gambit playing cards

8 perf

Sr Member
My boss at work and her boyfriend will be going as Rogue and Gambit this year for halloween. Need a relatively cheap way to do a light up/ glowing card for the Gambit costume. Needs to be self contained, and as close to real playing card size. Any ideas out there? Thanks.
 
Thanks! The Instruct-able one was basically the idea I came up with and tried to explain it to her. Prop gurus must think alike somewhere along the line. :)
I was wondering about combining the two ideas from each video.
If you were to use EL wire/ tape inside the plexi frame, you could make it a lot thinner. By running the wires and power module up your arm, you could effectively have two contacts on the card that would act as a switch when you touched them both. The card only lights up for you, and only when you pick it up.
 
I would recommend getting hi-bright EL Wire, if you're going that route. If you can get your hands on some LEDS, I highly recommend that! LEDS will produce a brighter light and will "flare" out.
 
I'm in the middle of adding more lights...this was just a test to see how they were looking! There's five LEDs in there right now, I'm about to add 2 to three more.

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http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hpho...42380_193671420680273_588735_1164215267_n.jpg
 
That is freaking awesome.
I hope you do a step by step celticruins cause that i brilliant.

The card only lights up for you, and only when you pick it up.
That would make the cards over the top.
I know bubkiss about electrical stuff though so I can't help there.

Now I might have to go make some custom acrylic cards in my laser.hmmm....
 
Thanks guys! If had some left over EL Wire from my Tron suits, I'd try it...but I sold it -_-.

Did a few trials last night on adding more lights, but I need to go get another pack of batteries. I'll post a write up and final result, hopefully, later tonight!
 
I ended up sticking with the 5 LED's..but may try high-bright EL wire in the future. I want it to be REALLY bright, but the LED's just don't have the correct brightness, in a well-lit environment, that they could have. Especially when someone takes a picture with the flash on. Maybe adding reflective tape would help?

They do look great with a non-flash picture and in the dark! We took them to AWA this past weekend, and they got a really great response!

I ghetto rigged it since I didn't have too much time. Basically there's 3 purple and 2 red LED's in there. The purple LED's took WAY more volts than the red, and had to have 2 3 volt lithium batteries attached to them, as opposed to the reds, which only took 1 for both. They lights are triggered with the battery/LED package is put into the cards. The wires touch the battery and...let there be kinetic energy!

I basically did a similar thing to the instructables; except for the Plexiglas, I used baseball Toploaders. I super glued two of them together and drew out my own cards, simply because actual cards aren't going to allow the lights to penetrate, and the plastic-see through Bicycle cards don't defuse the light.

I'll definitely be fiddling around with these more, trying to achieve a massively bright light!
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I liked 8 perfs suggestion because then you wouldn't have to limit yourself to small batteries. You could run a 9 volt with some resistors up Gambit's sleeve to power more LEDs
 
I liked 8 perfs suggestion because then you wouldn't have to limit yourself to small batteries. You could run a 9 volt with some resistors up Gambit's sleeve to power more LEDs

Once I get more time to play around with it, I'll rig something up. Running the 9 volt would definitely allow brighter and MORE light. I made these as a quicky-prop of a small convention this past weekend.

I'll definitely have something better to show in the coming months ;)!
 
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