What's the deal with glow in the dark?

Those of you who don't know me very well (and it's not many that do), might not be aware of my penchant for glow-in-the-dark supplies. It's nothing you see me use very often and it's not like I have some compulsion to buy all kinds of glow-in-the-dark stuff. It's just that I have this childish fascination for glow-in-the-dark (aka GITD) craft supplies like glass beads, embroidery floss, yarn, clay, paint, craft and beading wire, sequins, inkjet paper etc.

Therefore you can right now find GITD sequins, Accu-Cord beading wire and seed beads (including twin beads) on my wishlist. Things some of you probably weren't even aware of existed. As for the two first items, I didn't know they existed until I got the idea to google it. I mean, it's GITD. If I can imagine a product in GITD, surely, someone out there somewhere must have already thought of it and begun making it. And it looks like they did.

As the days are getting darker, it feels like the perfect time to start thinking of some glow-in-the-dark project to make.I have made one, a GITD light garland, the which you can read about here (and/or here for a tutorial in Swedish). I do quite enjoy that one. I put the lights up in my bedroom and now that the evenings and nights are darker, I fall asleep under my own little starry sky.

In that post I also mentioned how my sis and I painted a night sky on a ceiling. I'm sorry to say it's just impossible for me to get a decent pic of it as it's so discreet in daylight (we tried our best to do it in a grown-up, stylish way...) and so hard to photograph at night. The best I can give you is one of the walls were you can see the house with GITD windows. I mixed the GITD paint with the wall paint to get a subdued glow, not as strong as in the stars but rather diffused (a trick I learned from a woman who gave me a tip about GITD polyclay and how I could mix it with other colours of clay). There is a constellation further up on the wall, but it's pretty much impossible to see in that artificial light.

(Yeah, painting those apple tree branches was a slight PITA. First tracing them on the painted wall using a strong lamp and a branch placed in the right angle and distance from the wall and then painting the whole thing using small brushes and paint mixed to one or so shade darker than the wall. Fun fact: guess how long it took before the cats dirtied the wall? Yepp, that fast.)

Anyway, back to my GITD stash. Many things are still just on my wishlist, but I have a few fun things to play with anyway.

First there's this glow-in-the-dark polyester embroidery floss from DMC. Really good glow in it and very soft and pliable. This thread is part of DMC's Light Effects range, no. E940. Do believe there are other GITD embroidery threads available too, but this is the only one I have.

Then there's my never opened package of nightglow Fimo polymer clay. Have thought about using this as mentioned above, blended with other colours. Not sure exactly what I want to do with this, though.

Then there's my beads. The starfish pendant actually belongs to my sis now. It's one of those sold without the GITD particles in it mentioned. Fun surprise for some, not so fun for others. My favourite amongst the few czech and chinese GITD glass beads I have are without a doubt the czech pinkish flower and leaf beads. Unlike many beads, the GITD effect isn't that apparent in daylight. No spooky-coloured spots or whitish lines as in the other beads in the pic. They look very normal -- unlike you turn off the light.

In the background you can also see som of my Hama "perler beads". When I got the idea to make my GITD lights, I had to buy a whole package of these beads, about 1 000 of which I used perhaps 100-150 for the light project. So I have a lot of plastic beads left to play with.

And that's pretty much it. They things I have to work with for a GITD project right now. I wonder what I'll do with it?


PS! For a longer, but still far from complete, list of GITD supplies of interest to beaders and jewellery makers, see this post in my other blog.

PPS! Couldn't keep from making a new Pinterest board: Glow in the dark craft ideas.

Glow-in-the-dark bead fun

As I've mentioned before I've got a childish fascination with glow-in-the-dark beads. And after having seen this project, I came to think of GITD Hama beads and what if I could use that technique and those beads for something... The lightbulb moment came months ago, but it was just yesterday that I got some cheap beads and was ready to realise my idea. And here's the result.

The beads are cut and then put on the thin cables, one bead for each light. The result is a "double" light garland that is either lit up by the LED lights or glows in the dark (as long as the bead "charge" lasts). I couldn't get any pics of what it looks like in the dark so I made this illustration based on one of the photos:

Nice, huh? My very own little night sky. Now, if I could only charge the beads enough for the "stars" to shine a little longer so I could enjoy it a bit more every night...

(Just remembered: this isn't my first indoor night sky project: when my sis and I had to repaint the corridor between our bedrooms, we painted a silhouette landscape and used glow-in-the-dark paint to illuminate the sky with stars. We used real constellations as templates so you can find e.g. Orion and the Big Dipper on the ceiling and walls, but not in the right place in corelation to one another.)

UPDATE: There's a step-by-step tut at my other blog available now. You'll find it here.

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Talking about home decór projects, why not take a look on my new makeshift lampshade? It really is just something I threw together, something to make the lightbulb feel less naked and austere until I can come up with an idea of a proper lampshade. One that doesn't include fluffy pale pink tulle because I may be a romantic but I don't like girly pink and frilly stuff like that.

If you take a really dark photo it can look quite spooky:

Embroidery thread for Christmas

I'm feeling a bit stressed, which is odd. Now, I know a lot of people are stressed this time of year, but that's people how try to juggle work, gift shopping for the kids, Christmas dinner preparations and more at the same time. I don't have a job, I live in a family that don't do a lot of gift giving and julbordet is mainly my mom's task. So why do I feel stressed and restless on and off these days?

I guess a large portion of it is "residue stress" from ordering things online, making choices of what to buy and what not to buy, hoping they'll make it in time for Christmas and part is that I want certain things done before the new year. And then there's the daily advent calendar contests and giveaways I don't want to miss. Or maybe it's just a late reaction on the whole turning 30 thing. "I'm getting old, time's precious and shouldn't be spent in front of the computer", "what am I doing with my life", "everyone my age's got man, babies, home of their own and careers" "I'm tired of people seeing me as a failure, but am lost for what to do" sort of. Or maybe I'm picking up other people's Christmas stress?

So -- whatever the real cause may be -- while I should have more free time than most people right now, I've felt slightly stressed out and been really bad at reading all the blogs I enjoy and just generally being even more hopeless at the social interaction thing than usual. Not sure if it's Christmas or a late reaction to turning 30. Anyway, I've ordered everything I need for Christmas and gotten it, will do the last food shopping tomorrow and have written my last blog post for the year at Maneki's Pärlblogg so now I'll try to unwind. Pick up my beads -- and my new embroidery floss. Because this is what I got the other day in the mail, my Christmas gift to myself.

Above you can see two skeins of Dansk blomstergarn, Danish Flower Thread (the original). I really like the soft colours and recently they added new colours to their range. So what more? Because you know I couldn't stop there...

I also got some hand-dyed multi-coloured flower thread by german Tentakulum, Klippans lingarn (Swedish linen thread), DMC linen thread and Raj Mahal art silk (viscose). There's also some dyed heavy linen thread by Stef Francis in the background. That skein is from a previous purchase.

The package also included soie de gobelins from Tentakulum. It looks like a mess -- and that's how it looked in the cellophane bag -- but it really isn't. Soie = silk.

And as I'm so childish sometimes I of cause had to get the DMC glow-in-the-dark polyester floss. I've got GITD glass beads and Fimo too. Just missing GITD seed beads.

As usual, you can see that I tend to gravitate towards certain colours. This time, I consciously tried to include teal and blueish hues and I also bought some flower thread in red-peach (not in the pics). As usual, I bought these without any ideas of what to do with the threads. I'm a collector, I collect colours and materials rather than buy a thread.

Talking about threads I don't know what to do with, here's some Stef Francis hand-dyed silk from a previous shopping spree. It's just so soft and pretty, but what to do with it? Especially the spun silk with flames is hard to plan for: I want to use it in a way that really brings out the texture and colours in this variegated thread. "Flames" means it's thinner in some places and heavier in others. Beautiful in a skein, but I worry about ending up doing an embroidery where this variation is lost in the stitches and patterns.

I'm not giving up beading and jewellery-making, of cause not. But I like the idea of rekindling my love for embroidery -- and finding a way to combine beading and embroidery as well as make embroidered/needlework jewellery. This is something I'll be working on these coming months. Will try to have some computer-free days so I can really focus and then hopefully I'll have something nice to show here on the blog next year.


PS! If you like flowers, don't miss my blog posts on yarn, More yarn!, for more pics. There's some space-dyed perle cotton too. And I've got a Pinterest board with nothing but ribbon, yarn and threads as well.

Beads with a secret (this is not your average bead bouquet)

So one might think I already own enough leaf and flower beads. And surely I must already have pink luster pressed-glass beads in these shapes. But I just had to buy these as I'm childish.

Ok, I'll probably have to explain that. These beads might not look like something that'd excite the child within very much. But then you haven't seen these pics. My flower and leaf beads as seen in the dark. Yes, they're glow-in-the-dark beads.

Unlike many other GITD glass beads these don't have as visible streaks and specks of greenish yellow so it's not as apparant in daylight that these beads glow in dim light or dark. And it's a rather powerful glow, at least if you "charge" them in full sunlight like I do -- then you don't need much for than a slightly dim corner of the house to start seeing that eerie shine.

Unfortunately, my camera is not that good with dim light or the dark so I can't get even a half-decent pic of what these actually look like when they glow myself, but I think the Bello Modo pics are very representative of how they look IRL.