Thread: Glowing Bottles

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Disclaimer: I am a technician for Glow Inc., which makes high-end glow in the dark paints.

This time of year, we are flooded with customers asking how to make liquid in bottles glow in the dark. It is almost impossible to do.

However, you can get an awesome effect, by pouring glow in the dark waterbased paint into the bottle and slow rotating it until the inside is coated. This is a great effect if you use interesting bottles. It is also very cool if you squeeze a candle into the opening and melt the wax down the sides.

If you absolutely want or need a liquid in the bottle, some people only paint the very bottom of the bottle with the glow paint. The faint glow reflects off the bottle and the liquid inside.

You can also use a blacklight to bump up the effect, or use items that glow under black light in a bottle in conjunction with a blacklight and get great effects.

http://www.halloweenforum.com/genera...ack-light.html

My cheap and easy faves are detergent or fabric softener mixed with water and tonic water (the stuff you can buy in a 2 liter at the grocery!). The detergent/fabric softener (as long as it has phosphates - and most of them do) glows a blue and the tonic water glows yellow-ish white.

You just need a black light (and it needs to be either the long tube or the compact UV fluorescent type - NOT the incandescent bulbs that are complete crap) and use a liquid that is black light reactive.

Glow in the dark paint reacts AMAZINGLY with blacklight, too... super duper glow!

you can also use glow stick ingredients

Another way to make bottles "glow" is to have them sitting on a box which has holes in it, just smaller than the diameter of the bottle. Then a light inside the box shining up through the bottle will make it light up.

Skylighter, Thanks for the painting inside the bottle tip!

Umm it's not impossible....in fact its ridiculously possible, there a lots of different liquids that phosphorescence under UV lighting.
Taking apart highlighters and soaking the cores in water does pretty well. Detergents work great, and Tonic Water is also really cool looking (blue green glow). The paint in the bottle looks pretty cheesy since it doesn't look like liquid at all... you can see through the items I just mentioned and they glow great!


Here is a link with a bunch of great things you can stick in bottles that glow some great colors!

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthi...blacklight.htm