Black Light Party 101

I'm pretty much a blog slacker.  The reality of the matter is that I really don't have time to keep it up.  But after weeks of preparing for my daughter's 13th birthday black light party, I feel compelled to share what I learned.  So, this is NOT a craft blog.  It's not a party blog.  It never has been.  Never will be.  Unless you're related to me, you likely won't find any of my other posts to be remotely interesting, so I wouldn't bother looking at them : )  But if you're looking for black light party info, here we go . . .

WARNING:  I spent EONS researching for this party.  My goal here is to share what I learned for anyone who is trying to do the same thing.  This is a CRAZY long blog post.  While I have included pictures, I have mostly spent a lot of time describing what I did.  So, that means lots of reading.  But, if it's info that you want . . . you'll be glad for it.

Researching this topic online got frustrating sometimes.  I found lots of forums where people talked about what glows under black light, what they used to cover walls and what kind of black lights are good/bad.  However, they usually spoke in very general terms.  I was looking for SPECIFICS.  I will do my best to provide brand names and/or links to products where possible.  There are really cool sites out there like blacklight.com or Cool Glow that sell tons of awesome stuff.  But as I looked them over, all I could see was dollar signs.  There HAD to be a better way to do this.  Well, here it is.

An important thing to note before I get started:  In this post I use the terms "UV reactive" and "glows under blacklight" interchangeably.  Let's face it.  While "UV reactive" is more accurate, "glow" is faster to type.  Please don't confuse "glow" with "glow-in-the-dark."  There are lots of things that you can find that are glow-in-the-dark.  That means that they need to be "charged" by some sort of light, and then they will glow in any dark room.  But, they lose their charge after a few hours.  Things that are UV reactive require black light in order to glow.  However . . . glow-in-the-dark items are ALSO UV reactive.  They glow under black light endlessly, without any need of charging.  Also, glow sticks (you know, those bracelets that to crack to create a chemical reaction and they glow in the dark) look awesome under black light.  They glow really bright when they are freshly cracked, but even once they loose their normal glow, they will STILL glow under black light.  So DON'T throw away those old glow sticks.

Next, I suppose that I should explain my party space.  I was preparing a completely unfinished basement.  It is kind of "L" shaped.  We curtained off the short party of the "L" so that we had a long rectangular room that measured 49' long  x 16' wide. (We hid all of our basement junk behind the curtains).  The ceiling is not finished.  We just have open floor joists.  All walls are concrete.  Because of our set-up, we felt great freedom with our decorating.  Someday we will finish our basement.  Walls, ceiling and floors will all be covered.  So we looked at this as an opportunity to have a cool party and create a fun teen-space that we will keep until we finish the basement.

NEXT.  Stop.  Go to Amazon. Buy this.  I will talk about other preparation stuff first, but you need time for this to arrive in the mail before you start shopping. It will be your best friend when planning a black light party:

It's a black light flashlight.  I bought this exact model and it was great.  Only 4 inches long.  PERFECT for carrying in your purse.  That way you can test anything that you are considering buying BEFORE you buy it so that you KNOW it will glow under black light.  I bought TONS of stuff at Dollar Tree for super cheap.  But I never would have bothered with that if I hadn't been sure that they would glow.  TONS of stuff that you think *might* glow, doesn't glow.  There were also lots of things that surprised me and looked awesome under black light.  You will never know if you don't have a flashlight.  (Or you will spend a LOT of time returning things.)  Trust me.  Buy it.  You won't regret it.

PREPARATION:

WALLS
We painted our big, huge wall black.  We used Color Place interior flat paint from Walmart. $11.99/gallon. I went to the guy and told him that I want "dirt cheap black flat paint" and that's exactly what I got.  But, it was PERFECT.  We used 2 gallons for our huge wall.  I'm very glad that we used flat paint because it doesn't show all of the imperfections in the wall.  Also, it was VERY low odor.  I expected to be smelling paint for days.  After all, we were working in a basement with very little ventilation, and we were using cheap paint.  We painted on Friday afternoon and by Saturday morning you (literally) couldn't smell any paint, at all.

A few things about painting concrete:  It sucks.  Poured concrete walls have lots of holes and seems.  Ugh.  If you have access to a paint sprayer, I highly recommend that you use it.  Lesson learned.

We left the two short walls their natural concrete color.

The other "long wall" was curtained.  (Some of it was blocking off all of our junk.  Some of it was covering bookshelves.)  For curtains we used black plastic table cloths (from the dollar store) and Command hooks.  On one end of each table cloth, we put three piece of duct tape (evenly spaced, of course).  Then we cut a tiny hole in each piece of duct tape and the holes were where the curtains hung on the hooks.  (Basically we used the duct tape as hole reinforcements to reinforce the cheap plastic and it worked really well.)  We used the 3M hooks because our curtains were hanging from our heating/cooling ducts.  We could have also hung them from nails in the joists, but this worked better.

BLACK LIGHTS
This was a gradual adventure for us.  We didn't want to spend a ton (and it would be VERY easy to do so - like hundreds of dollars) but, we had a big space.  Initially we thought we would just take out our regular light bulbs and put black light CFLs in their place.  We bought six of these.  (EDIT:  That link has been changed because Home Depot no longer carries the bulbs that we bought.  So, this Amazon link show the style, but we didn't use this exact brand.) The basement looked pretty awesome when we put them in, but the low light did kind of hurt your eyes after a little while.  (I'm going to mention this, though it should be a no brainer:  Don't ever stare directly at a black light.  It's REALLY bad for your eyes.)  So, we decided to add three of these.  They were great.  We attached them directly to the joists and ran extension cords to them. (We also put a screw in the joist at the end of the light where the cord connects so that they wouldn't accidentally get pulled off of the screws that were holding them up.)  At this point, the CFL bulbs were being controlled by the light switch and the tube lights had to have their extension cords plugged in.  But as we thought about it, we didn't really like the idea of having the bulbs on the light switch.  What if someone got hurt and we needed lights on quickly?  Or what if they just got tired of the black lights and wanted to turn on regular lights for awhile?  Plus, we were also hoping to make this a relatively permanent place and we didn't want to have to switch light bulbs all the time.  So, we decided to hang naked bulb sockets and plug them into extension cords as well.  (They were similar to this, though we didn't use this exact one.  We used what we had around the house.)

9 lights in all and the lighting was great!  Didn't hurt your eyes and everything looked awesome!

DECORATION:

I guess at this point, I should post a few pics of what the party looked like in the end.  I will address different  items along the way.

(Here you see part of the painted wall on the right,
a naked concrete wall straight ahead,
and part of the curtain to the left.)

Contrary to popular belief, not all things that are white are also UV reactive.  White fabric and white paper glow really well, but white paint does not, and only *some* white plastic does.  **enter flashlight**

Other strange things that glow under black light:  Tide liquid laundry detergent and Clorox 2.  I don't know how that will be helpful to you, but there you go.

The string art was one of my favorite decorations that we did!   Remember that this wall is concrete.  So, we couldn't just hammer in some nails.  We used our 3M hooks again.  (I dabbed over them in black paint so that they would blend in with the wall.)  FYI:  If you're using 3M hooks on a concrete wall, I really recommend that you let the hooks sit for AT LEAST 24 hours before hanging ANYTHING on them.  We learned that one the hard way.

I bought all of my yarn from Joann Fabrics & Crafts.  (You can sign up on their website for great coupons.  They also have a smartphone app.  FYI:  They let you use more than one coupon at a time.  I made out like a bandit!)  You can find the pink and green yarn here.  (It's Red Heart Super Saver yarn.  The colors are Pretty 'n Pink and Spring Green.  I also used White on the ceiling).  The orange is Deborah Norville Collection.  I can't find it on their site, but my Joann's had an end cap of neon yarn.  It was more expensive, but I used a coupon. : )

Since I'm talking about yarn . . . here's the ceiling.  This was another favorite feature of mine.  It gave the illusion of a ceiling, even though there isn't one.  My wonderful husband, with the help of daughter #2 nailed about a skillion small nails into the joists.  (You want them to be small, but have a head on them so it holds the yarn.)

This ceiling could have taken us DAYS to finish.  Tie the yarn, get down, move the step ladder.  Get up.  Wrap the yarn.  Get down.  Move the step ladder.  Get up.  Wrap the yarn . . . for EVERY SINGLE nail.  And that's just one color yarn.  Next start yarn color #2.  You get the idea.  But thankfully I have very rare moments of genius. : )  I found a 5 foot piece of 1" PVC pipe in the garage.  We ran the yarn through the pipe, then tied it to the first nail.  Then we were just able to reach the pipe up and it kind of acted as an extension arm to wrap the yarn around each nail.  No step stool necessary.  If only those moments of genius came more often : )

The white door is where you enter the basement.  Notice that it does not glow.  (Nor does white screen printing on clothing.  Just a 2 cent extra for you.)

(Splatter painted curtains.)

PAINT
You will QUICKLY realize that UV reactive paint is EXPENSIVE.  I hunted all over the internet and it stressed me out.  I wanted to splatter paint my black walls and curtains and I was NOT willing to spend a fortune.  Walmart carries neon acrylic paint that is UV reactive, but it cost $2 per bottle.  I wanted several colors and a few bottles of each.  I just wasn't willing to pay that.  Well, then I decided to take a peak at Joann's.  I didn't have much hope.  What are the chances that Joann's would be cheaper than Walmart??  Boy was I WRONG.  They had their own off-brand (Craft Essentials) of neon paint and it cost 59 CENTS EACH!  Score! I think I bought four each of 5 different colors (yellow, green, pink, blue, orange).  In the end I still had a small amount paint left over.

We had tons of fun splatter painting.  We used plastic spoons.  My kids loved it (My youngest is 6).  We just put a little paint in the bowl of the spoon and they launched it at the wall/curtain, catapult style.  It was a great way to keep it controlled so that the kids could enjoy and we didn't waste paint.

This is our other wall that we left in its natural concrete color.  Hand printing it was great fun for all.  It was actually really cool because the pink and orange hand prints looked like they were floating off of the wall, giving a kind of 3-D look. (We got that with the splatter paint somewhat, but not as much.)

We used these lava lamps, courtesy of my brother.  While they certainly aren't necessary, and aren't even black light items, I was REALLY glad that we had them.  First of all, who doesn't love to look at a lava lamp?  Second, it brightened the room, without taking away from the black light effect.  The fiber optic thingy was also something that we had on hand, but looked great!

Ummm . . . this is basically just an example of me getting carried away with a paint pen.  It was fun.  This is the paint pen that I used.  It's from Walmart, and cost maybe a buck or two.

ENTERTAINMENT:

Music Station

We had our CD player (and CDs) out with an auxiliary cord plugged in (so that all of the girls could access music from their own MP3 players, if they wanted to.)  I had a lot of fun with the subway art style and a marker : )  This is a dresser with a hutch on top.  I used neon poster board (69 cents each at Dollar Tree) and taped it to the inside of the shelves.  I LOVED the effect.  (BTW silly string was from Dollar Tree.  $1 each.  It did glow under the black light.  The girls certainly had fun with it but it REALLY made the basement STINK.)

Make-up Station
We used this make-up.  (We didn't order it from this site, but I can't remember where I got it.)  I looked ALL OVER for UV reactive make-up.  I did find a few things, but NONE of them had good reviews.  So, I decided to bite the bullet and go for the good stuff.  This is high quality stage makeup.  I had nine girls using it all evening (with q-tips) and they barely dented it.  It works REALLY well.  We also had neon nail polish.  You can buy that anywhere.  In fact, my girls already had it, so we didn't buy any more.

Neon Duck Tape

We bought this at Walmart, though you could get it anywhere as colored tape is all the rage right now.  NONE of the patterned tapes that we found glowed.  Of the neon colors, only the pink and orange glowed.  We used it for hopscotch and for wrapping around our hula hoops (which were a huge hit!)

Glow bowling!  (I got the ball at 5 Below.  It's one of those giant green tennis balls.)

This was actually the result of an experiment gone wrong.  I was trying to make UV reactive hair gel.  While each color (obviously) glows really well, when it dries you lose the effect.  Bummer.  So we filled soda bottles with it and used it for bowling.  (You can also see jars of it on the make-up table.)  I won't bore you with a how to on this one since it was such a waste of time & money, but you should know this:

You can use highlighter cores to create glowing water.  

Fun stuff.  Green and yellow highlighters work best.  (I considered making a fountain out of glow water.  Maybe I'll do that for another party!)  Take the core-ink-cartridge-thingy out of the highlighter (It's the fibrous cylinder inside the marker that is wrapped in plastic. (NOT the tip of the marker) For some highlighters you will actually have to break the marker. Others pull apart easily.)  Put a large bowl in the sink, then cut the ink cartridge open and run water over it to rinse all ink out of the fibers.  Voila!  You have glow water!

We TRIED using this method to create UV reactive bubbles.  I had this vision of a bubble machine filling my basement with awesome glowing bubbles.  Well, it worked . . . Kind of.  The bubbles didn't look as awesome as I had imagined.  Plus, everywhere that a bubble popped on my floor, it left a fluorescent stain.  I could only imagine:  Hours of bubbles + 9 tween girls = massive mess.  I decided to nix it.

Instead we had neon balloons all over the floor.  They were more fun for the girls and only cost 99 cents at Walmart.

Twister was another brain child of mine.  I had actually ruined this twin sheet testing different markers and hair spray.  (BTW . . . highlighter markers DO stain fabric.  Also, I tried neon pink and neon orange hair sprays (like, the kind you buy at Halloween time.)  Both glowed under black light.  Both stained fabric.)

For our twister game, I used the non-stained side and screen printed the circles on it (Yes, I have a personal screen printer).  Instead of using silk screen ink, I just used the neon acrylic paint that we used to splatter the walls.  A note about acrylic paint and fabric:  While acrylic paint DOES stain fabric, it also washes out quite a bit.  I say this because it's a big bummer when you screen an entire twister game onto a sheet and then wash it to get pencil marks out, thinking that the paint won't wash out, and you end up having to re-screen the entire thing.  It washes out enough that you can barely see it, but not enough to use the sheet as a normal white sheet.  Don't ask me how I know that ; )

For the Twister spinner, I just used our traditional Twister spinner.  I removed the spinner part.  Then I created the spinner design on the computer, printed it, and glued it onto the back of the traditional spinner.  I taped around the edges with scotch tape, and painted the circles with the appropriate colors.  Once they dried, I put the plastic spinner back on.  If you are interested, you can print the spinner here.  (It's 2 pages that need to be trimmed and meet in the middle)

DISHES:

The "eating table"

Because we were wanting to re-use our space, we decided that we preferred to buy plastic cups, plates, etc . .  Honestly, I was never impressed with any of the colored paper ones that I found, so that made it an easy decision.  (FYI:  Styrofoam does not glow under black light.)

On our eating table we have the following items:

Sand buckets (Dollar Tree $1/each)

Pink plastic plates (Dollar Tree $1/4 pack)

Blue plastic bowls (Dollar Tree $1/4 pack)

Blue plastic cups (Dollar Tree $1/4 pack)

Cheap white paper napkins (We had these on hand, but they're the ones that you buy a huge pack at Walmart for like $2)

Neon Straws (Walmart $1/pack)

Clear Neon Green forks/knives/spoons (Dollar Tree $1/mixed pack of 36)

(I know that the cups and bowls glow white, but they are actually blue in regular light)

(We used the sand buckets for chips and puppy chow.  FYI - Cheese puffs glow (kind of) under black light)

Food Table

Non-Food Items:

Purple Tray (The one that is front and center - it looks white under black light) (Dollar General $2 each)

Clear Green Serving Tray (Dollar Tree $1/each)

2 Large white bowls (Dollar Tree $1/each)

Pink cups (that are holding glow sticks) (Wal-mart 50 cents/4pack - Easter clearance)

Tall pink vases (Dollar Tree $1/each)

Yellowish/orange flowers (Dollar Tree $1/bunch)

Green pinwheel flowers (Dollar Tree $1/each)

Glow sticks (Dollar Tree $1/pack of 15)

Birthday candles (Walmart $1/pack of 24)

Neon paper for Accordion circles (Walmart I don't remember the price)

Slinky - on hand (though it was probably a dollar store find)

Deviled egg tray - on hand

Cupcake holder - on hand

Food Items:

Oh boy.  I could go on for a long time about food that glows.  When you research food that glows under black light, the #1 thing that you will find is that tonic water glows.

Problem:  Tonic water also tastes like crap.

I tried making jello with tonic water.  It definitely glowed.  It also tasted like nail polish remover.  If you want to call that food, go ahead.

Personally, I gave up on food that glows.  Because I found that any other food that did "glow" didn't glow very well.  

So my advice:  Choose food that is yummy.  

Choose serving dishes that glow.

If any of your serving dishes don't glow, make them glow using glow sticks.

(We put glow sticks in between our deviled eggs and it looked awesome!)

 . . . with the exception of

THE CAKE

This was the one food that I really wanted to glow, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice taste.  I was SO THRILLED when I saw my frosting under the black lights.  I couldn't have asked for it to turn out better.  And there was NO TONIC WATER involved :)

I modified my Grandma's heavenly frosting.  I will share the recipe.  Consider yourself blessed. : )

2 lb powdered sugar

2 cups shortening

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon imitation butter

2 teaspoons almond extract

3 (100 mg) Vitamin B2 capsules

20 drops neon green food coloring

Imitation butter can be found with other extracts in the baking aisle.  I bought the food coloring as Walmart.  I ordered the vitamin B2 from Amazon. Yes, vitamin B2 glows under black light.  In fact any energy drinks (Red Bull, Monster) that say "includes B vitamins" will glow.  You can click here for directions to make glowing "Kryptonite" candy.  I didn't make it, but it would be awesome for a super hero party.  

(I recommend that you not use more than 3 B2 capsules in your frosting, otherwise you will get a slight bitter taste.  Don't ask how I know that.)

Directions:

Open Vitamin B2 capsules and pour powder in milk.  MIX WELL (I put it in a shaker and shook it for a while.)  Microwave until milk is HOT.

Combine powdered sugar, shortening salt, imitation butter, almond extract and hot milk/vitamin mixture in a Kitchenaid mixer.  Mix on high for 10 minutes.  Yes . . . 10 minutes.  You pretty much have to beat the crap out of it.

At this point, your frosting will be light yellow.  SO . . . it would be wise to plan for a frosting color that can be made from yellow.  (Yellow, green or orange would be wise.)  I chose lime green.

Add 20 drops of neon green food coloring.  Mix well.

(Side note:  you can leave out the vitamin B2 and food coloring and you will get a heavenly, bright white, almond flavored frosting that you could happily eat by the spoonful.  But it doesn't glow under black light.)

Frost and enjoy!!

PHOTOGRAPHY:

I wanted to take a minute to mention this topic.  Taking pictures under black light really isn't difficult, but you have to know what you're doing.

Rule #1:  NO FLASH.  If you don't turn your flash off, you will completely lose the glow that the black lights create.

Rule #2:  Slow your shutter speed.  I mean REALLY slow it down.  Thankfully my camera has a night time setting (If your camera has it, use it.  It might also be called a fireworks setting.)

Rule #3:  Use a tripod.  With my night time setting, some of my pictures (literally) took a minute to expose.  There is no way that you can hold your camera perfectly still for that long, so don't torture yourself.

Photographing people under black light is very difficult.  Especially when they are wiggly teen girls : )  But it's always fun to try.

You get the idea. : )

Well, I hope that this has been helpful to SOMEONE.  

I guess at the very least, I have recorded all of this so that I remember it all the next time I do this, right??