Monday, October 17, 2011

glow stick lanterns.



With the dark arriving earlier and earlier, the boys are often out playing with the neighbors as it gets dark. They play tag and ghost in the graveyard. We walk around the block to see what spooky decorations are turned on. And we play with glow sticks.

We've been wanting to crack some open after being reminded by Tara. We gathered a few of the larger glow sticks, canning jars, strong scissors and water. We cracked and shook, and then cut off the top and poured the liquid into the canning jars (using a fine strainer keeps the little broken bits out of your jars). You can keep single colors or mix and see what you get. If you add a little bit of water you get a bit better glow.

Screw the lids on tight and shake! The canning jar glows so much (for hours, depending on your glow sticks) - very cool and lots of fun.






If you get some on your fingers just wash with soap. Or, run around in the dark waving your hands in the air and moaning like a ghost to get a few awesome shrieks. Ahem. Although non-toxic the liquid can have little shards in it from cracking the tube to activate, so you don't want to play in the liquid - keep it in the jar. When you are done you can just wash the jars with hot soapy water.

4 comments:

Tara said...

Glad there was glowing spooky fun to be had at your house!

Amy Bradstreet said...

I've been seeing these glow-stick projects on Pinterest and though my kids may be past their glow-stick phase, they might rethink that with these incredibly cool projects. The survivalist in me thinks it's also good to know, should you want a brighter glow from your one emergency stick. Eh hem.

Jessica said...

I saw this on Tara's blog and thought they were so cool.

This summer we played glow stick charades at the beach (with the long, bendy kind) and we'd form them into our "props." One split and the liquid got on Benjamin and I nearly died...I was frantic to wash it off!

I think I'll do a little more research so I can try this and not be such a paranoid mama. LOL!

Melissa said...

This looks like so much fun.