Glow Party!

It doesn’t seem like a year ago since I was sharpening up my bubble-blowing skills for Miss Chu’s 8th birthday. But she is indeed turning 9 and I am thankful that I don’t need to acquire any new abilities for this year’s party. She’s decided on a chilled get-together with her girlfriends for a movie, party food and glow-in-the-dark dressing up!

So we’ve been testing and stockpiling glow-in-the-dark miscellany over the past couple of weeks and Miss Chu presents a fun round-up of our inventory in a new video, and explains how UV light makes neon things glow:

 

I purchased an LED UV blacklight after much research to try and determine whether these things are actually dangerous or not. On balance, the LED UV lights (compared to the fluorescent UV bulbs) seem to be safest, as they emit only a very narrow range of UVA light which is very close in wavelength to the light at the blue end of the spectrum; well clear of the UVB-UVC range of UV wavelengths. Nonetheless, to be on the safe side, it’s best not to stare directly at the light for any length of time.

The glow effect of neon products in blacklight is mesmerising, and the girls were super excited to dress up in neon paraphernalia and caper around in the blacklight, making some amusing photos and videos in Photobooth which we hooked up to a large flatscreen.

Here are some suitably blurry screenshots (to avoid identifying any kids other than Miss Chu!) but you can kind of see the fun combination of glow-in-the-dark dressing up with iLife’s Photobooth!

Needless to say, she totally loved this party! Happy Birthday Miss Chu!