Thread: Blacklight Photos, Ideas and Tips Please!

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I have not incorporated blacklights very much in the past up til now save for a small window display and our FCG but nothing a cheap 24 in won't light.

Last year I scored a whole bunch of high power, tube blacklights, ranging from 18" to 48", at a church rummage sale, after a local night club closed down... It's a long story how the lighting equipment of a local gay club ended up being sold at a church. LOL! I also scored a ton of other cool stuff including "Southern Comfort" logo pumpkins Anyway back on task here...

I am wanting to use some of these to light an entire large room to create a psychedelic looking forest. I was going to drape the walls in light-wieght, black painters plastic, then fill the walls using non-reactive fishing line, with thin branches that I have spray painted with fluorescent paint. I'm thinking this would be a good, cheap way to utilize my blacklights and to decorate a very large, difficult to cover, room. Opinions?

I should note my theme is "Twisted Fairy Tales."

I would love to hear thoughts, tips and tricks on working with black light and uv-reactive paints, dyes, fabrics etc. Also I would LOVE to see some photos of heavy black light usage in decorations or scenes.

The haunted forest is a great idea. I have used black lights in the past. I have read that if you spray a thick mixture of Tide and water on any fabric it will fluoresce. I just used white tulle and it fluoresced pretty well. Tonic water fluoresces blue. I used it for this skull head sculpted out of an apple. I used it in drinks as well.

Good luck with your haunting!

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Star, while I don't have pictures, I have been using blacklights for 3 years now in a garage haunt. I get my fluorescent paint from dick blick art supplies - it is very reasonable and is true fluorescent. Neon paint is not neccessarily fluorescent! Check out the glow in the dark slime on about.com. Made with borax, GITD paint and clear Elmer's glue, it is really cool stuff! BTW, anything glow-in-the-dark will be very bright under blacklights. I have also used fluorescent mineral makeup, which would be really cool on some twisted fairies! Check out rave supplies, too. White cheesecloth looks cool in blacklight, especially if you treat it with RIT whitener. Here's a tip - be sure not to wash anything you want to "disappear" in the blacklight room, like black clothes. Lint and the phosphorus in detergents both glow under blacklight. Fluorescent hightlighters glow like crazy, so you can use them to write or to tint fluids. I used a ghillie suit last year that I added splotches of fluorescent paint to. My actor looked like a freaky walking tree! Working with blacklights is really fun. Test out fabrics, wigs, anything you're thinking of using. You'd be suprised at the kinds of things that are blacklight reactive.

Thanks for the tips guys that gives me a TON of good ideas!

Originally Posted by chartreusechaos

Neon paint is not neccessarily fluorescent!

So I am curious. Have you ever used street marking paint? It says fluorescent on the can. I am just thinking I will probably need a lot of it to cover all my branches but many of the craft spray paints are expensive. I was planning on using something like that, but it won't save me money if I have to turn around and buy more paint that actually works.

Maxiboots-- I never thought to spray is directly on the fabric. We washed cheesecloth and it fluoresced very well but your lace looks BRIGHT! Wonder if this would work on darker fabrics, not as well I bet but if your not washing it off. I ask cause I'm trying to buy as little as possible this year and I have piles of "creepy cloth" I got at the Dollar Tree last year.

I am considering mixing tide into some bubble mixture to make fluorescent bubbles.

Star girl, I didn't use any detergent on the ghost costume at all. Anything bright white will look even brighter under black light. I think the tulle looks brighter because it's a tighter weave than cheesecloth. But you can use the Tide mixture to make darker fabrics fluoresce.

Love your idea of the fluorescing forest. Here's some tips on blacklight/fluorescing:

I have used the street marking fluorescing spray paint. It glowed fairly well but it will glow better and you'd need less paint if you white painted the trees first. Fluorescing paint needs a white background to fully pop.

Go to a fabric store with a portable blacklight. You would be amazed at what already fluoresces. Some swimsuit materials, hunter orange fleece, some neon yarns, and of course tulle.

I use WildFire paints because they are very concentrated and fluoresces like crazy... but, you get to pay for that This is where you can get it. They also have lots of other stuff that glows. The string and ribbon looks cool: http://www.blacklight.com/



The blacklight and fluorescing paint is used for 3D ChromaDepth in the haunt. So, the paint schemes may look a little weird in the but perhaps you can still get some ideas:





























Here's a walk-through from last year:

Hey star, I use blacklights in my haunt every year. A couple ideas that I'm thinking might work for you are as followed:

1. Extract highlighter fluid from florescening highlighters and mix with water to create glowing liquid! One tube from the inside of a highlighter makes a lot of this liquid when adding water. I use the liquid in flasks and such in a laboratory scene, but maybe a evil witch, or an Alice in wonderland "Drink Me" potion or something in this glowing haunted forest? Just an idea

2. I have recently came across this invisible blacklight paint. Invisible in normal light, and glowing when exposed to blacklight. I"m thinking of switching from dimmly lit forest to a psychadelic wonderland! Some of this paint can be pricey, but search google if you are interested and bargain shop.

Wow, these are incredible. I don't have much experience on the scale of these other posters, but FWIW I found that plain white paper glows AWESOMELY, and for my Mad Tea Party scene a couple years ago (wicked wonderland party) I printed out a bunch of quotes from the movie/book and put them all over the walls (I feel like a literary themed party needs quotes!)

http://www.heatherscreativelife.com/...continued.html

The Tulip blacklight fabric paint was just OK, and while my melamine plates looked awesome the ceramic stuff didn't flouresce at all.

Good luck!

I haven't tried this, but I read washing items in fabric softener will make them glow under black lights