These pretty strips of light are plastic diffused backlights, often seen in LCD displays. Normally they're tucked behind the LCD and shine white light from below.
Here, we've got an RGB LED variant available individually, and it's really cool! Each LED is encased in a 3.3mm thick strip of acrylic. The acrylic strip is a special type that is very good at diffusing light, so even though there is only a single LED, it provides near-uniform lighting. The other flat side of the strip has a reflector, so you only get light from the top (otherwise, the backlight would lose 1/2 the brightness unnecessarily).
You can treat this backlight just like an RGB LED: the longest pin is the anode, connect that to 3~5VDC. Then connect the shorter red, green and blue pins through resistors to ground - each should draw no more than 20mA.
You'll get a pretty shape that you can mask with vinyl or draw over with a marker. You will need a resistor in series like any other LED, to set the max current. We think these would make great wearables without the need for EL or inverters, they're much brighter than EL and use less battery. The trade-off is these are not flexible at all.
This particular backlight has a 0.8" by 2.8" (22.5mm x 72.5mm) lit area.
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