My Black Light Display Project

[EarthQuake]

So the last couple of days I was rummaging through the closet and I pulled out my old black light. So I got the idea in my head to put it on the top shelf of my desk in the bedroom and hang something on the wall to illuminate it. I was googling for ideas and I ran across someone who did a fountain with glowing water.

I didn't have a fountain of any sort, so I decided I'd try filling some bottles with this "glow water".

Here's what I managed to produce so far:



The first ones I did were the Bawl's energy drinks. I bought five bottles of the stuff in the dark blue bottles (yes, I drank all five within the hour), and filled them with a highlighter water solution. The solution itself was an orange-ish color, but it glows bright green under the black light, even through the almost-opaque blue bottle.



Then I got it in my head to write something on the wall using some sort of invisible ink. I had to settle for petroleum jelly, which glows a bright white-blue color. It's very effective, and when smeared on evenly, you cannot even see it in daylight. You can see my homage to The Shining (yes, I know not all the letters are supposed to be backwards).

Next I wanted to make a replica of a bottle of UV Blue vodka. I used a bottle of tonic water (got it at Walmart for like 75 cents) and poured it into a large bowl so I could agitate it to disperse the carbonation. The tonic water itself glows a bright sky-blue color, but is clear in visible light. So I added some blue ink (from a non-fluorescent blue highlighter) to color it without affecting the ultraviolet effect.



So after I got done with all of these, I still wasn't satisfied. I wanted more variety in color, so I went googling again to see what I could come up with. In particular, I wanted to do something red, but because there are so few things that will glow red under a black light and I didn't want to order any fluorescent red paints off the internet, I went shopping for more highlighters. I ran across some pink, orange, and blue fluorescent ones and bought some more bottles. This time instead of the Bawl's energy drinks, I found some really cheap energy drinks called Hydrive. There were exactly four different colored ones each which corresponded to the different colors of highlighter solution I could make.

So, here is a closer pic of those results:



Yeah, so I think I got a bit obsessed, but I'm done now. I probably went through like 4 packs of highlighters, each at $1 a pack. The Bawl's bottles were definitely the most expensive part at $2.50 a bottle, but luckily I had the UV Blue already on my liquor shelf. Here's some of the stuff I used:



Has anyone else done stuff like this before? If so, what sort of colors and effects were you able to do?

[kristus]

EarthQuake said:

The first ones I did were the Bawl's energy drinks. I bought five bottles of the stuff in the dark blue bottles (yes, I drank all five within the hour)

I remember this, was fun. :D You forgot to mention the clerk that thought you were drugged. (though techincally you were. :p)

[herooftime1000]

Triiiiipy.

"I don't need drugs to enjoy this, just to enchance it."
-Otto, The Simpsons.

Seriously, I want a dark light of my own. *looks on Ebay*

[EarthQuake]

Yeah, I was rather excited about all of this too, so that added to my hyperactive behavior. I think I probably visited 10 gas stations/stores in total, trying to find those damned things. The only place that carried it was Speedway (Super America) and they only had the blue ones.

And I didn't really want to wait to start the project, so I drank all the bottles as fast as I could. I didn't want to waste them either. :)

Anyways, the total projects costed me about $25 excluding the UV Blue bottle. I think it was worth it. You have to see these in person to see how beautiful they really are. My camera didn't really do justice, especially in the low light conditions.

[MasterOFDeath]

Bawls are awesome. The blue bottles are easy to find around here (a LAN party/net cafe type place carries them for $2 a bottle) but I've yet to find any of the other kind.

Cool display. Blacklights are tons of fun. :D

[kristus]

First time I even heard of Bawls were at this years ET.TV ETQW coverage of QuakeCon. Since then I hear about it all over. :p

[SyntherAugustus]

More Ounces More Bounces!

Heh, nice display.