Disney Electrical Parade-Inspired Belle Costume

Replica Props Forum (RPF) user Teresa Roberts’ daughter requested a Belle costume, and she’s going all out. Roberts is making the iconic yellow ball gown but with a twist; her design is covered in sparkling LEDs and a light-up red rose. She was inspired by the costumes in Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade. The costume isn’t finished just yet, but Roberts has made a lot of progress with the build and has been sharing videos along the way. She’s using EL wire, LEDs, conductive thread, and 24 gauge speaker wire and adding LilyPad Arduino boards to run the lights. As she sewed the skirt of the dress together, she used drafting chalk to mark the lighting design and wiring diagram.

Belle Dress Design

Roberts is still working on wiring the lights. Here’s what she said in a recent update:

I found the perfect mini basic on/off toggle switch to hide in the bodice of the dress. I made a pageant dress, with strings of mini LED lights in the skirt of the dress. Worked well but you can’t do programming the way I do with this dress. But for a beginning project was perfect. I hooked it too a batter box with on off switch. Simple enough except to turn it on and off I had to crawl under the skirt. This is something she can turn on and off at any time with or without my help. SOOOOOOo much better. AND after LOTS and LOTS of research I believe I can run both the LED and the EL wire off the same battery pack. So i’m using 3 C batteries this time since SOOOO many more lights and circuit boards I didn’t want the batteries to die too fast. and I don’t want so many batteries it makes the dress crazy heavy. But I found an 5v EL inverter that got a USB plug on it. I’m hoping to splice the USB cord hook it strait to the power source. I hoping that 4.5v will be enough to run it. Fingers crossed! Worse case I can hook up its own secret button to a separate power source ( i also found one that runs off a 9V battery) thats my back up. But I’m excited because i though I was going to have to crawl under the dress to turn on the EL wire and either way I wont have to!

Some of her other test videos:

Keep up with the latest progress on the costume at The RPF.


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.