There are many ways to make an LED bracelet. In this build, I’ll be showing you how to make one with the minimal materials. I used felt, scissors, hot glue, a needle, a coin cell battery, conductive thread, pliers, a metal snap, beeswax, and a marker.
The battery holder above is optional, there are a variety of sewable coin cell batteries to choose from. My favorite to use has a tiny switch built in. In this build, I’ll be making my own battery holder, out of fabric!
The snap you use must be conductive, or metal, unless you decide to use a sewable battery holder with a switch. Conductive velcro is also an option. The closure of this bracelet build is also our switch!
The beeswax can is extremely helpful when sewing with conductive thread. Running your thread end through it helps you thread your needle! Conductive thread can be made of stainless steel, silver, or copper. My favorite, and the thread I use in this build, is 2-ply stainless steel.
Let’s take a second to go over our choices for light emitting diodes, or LEDs!
When choosing the lights for your bracelet, you have lots of options here too! There are sewable LEDs, tiny PCBs with built in resistors, or you can use standard breadboard LEDs. The sewable and breadboard kind are single colored lights, white, blue, red, etc. If you want rainbow LEDs, you’ll have to find special two prong RGB LEDs, these diodes have RGB crystals in them, programmed to cycle through their colors. Last but not least there are the sewable neopixels, the prettiest and trickiest LEDs, they require at least 3+ traces, versus a simple LED’s two, and they won’t light up without a program controlling them!
In this build, I’ll be using breadboard LEDs, with their prongs bent into sewable metal circles. Something to consider when designing your bracelet is that not all LEDs play nice with each other. The diode inside has a special crystal in it which produces the color, and a blue LED for example, will not light up if a red one is on the same circuit. Below, the red LED is stealing all the power from the blue!
Test out your multiple color LEDs before sewing with them, to make sure they’ll light up with the same battery. Above we have blue/white getting along, yellow/red doing well, and yellow/green working, however yellow is clearly stealing most of the battery juice!
Before I get started building the bracelet, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with the circuit. I suggest drawing it out on paper, especially if you’re using multiple LEDs.
The first picture shows 2 green LEDs lighting up in the simplest of circuits! Our positive leads on the LED go to the positive sides of the battery, the negative leads go to the negative side of the battery. The bracelet build involves using a switch, just like the second and third photo with the white LEDs above! The switch is simply an interruption to our circuit. It does not matter whether you interrupt the negative or positive traces, either will do! The most important rule is to never cross your positive traces with your negative traces, your LED will not light up then, as this causes a short. Also, this will drain your battery quickly!
Lets start building! These are my main materials:
You will need to cut out a strap to fit around your wrist, a small square (our battery pocket) with a tab, and a little rectangle tab holder!
First, sew the conductive thread on the top side of your bracelet. Make sure your knot is bulky, as you’ll want plenty of contact on your battery.
Second, lets hot glue our little tab holder to the backside of our bracelet:
Then, hot glue the little pocket on to the top of the bracelet. Make sure you don’t glue the side with the flap down, as this is how you’ll insert your battery:
Now that our pocket is sewn, it’s time to bend some LEDs so we can sew them! To keep track of your negative/positive sides, bend them in same direction, or mark them with a sharpie! I did both, shown below.
Start from the left side and sew your positive traces, making your traces heading toward your battery pocket.
Sew your positive traces to the top of your battery pocket, take care to make several loops on the inside of the pocket, so your positive connection will be secure. Then, sew your negative traces to the end of the bracelet, where you’ll sew on the other snap! Slip in your battery and close the bracelet, your LEDs should light up!
Since the circuit is complete and working, you can embellish your LEDs with felt flower details and embroidery floss if you’d like!
