It was time for another rainy day craft here at our house and I was in the mood for something a little more exciting and different. To the Internet I went. To my utter pleasure I found a tutorial on how to make glow chalk. Seriously, chalk that glows.

I was partly sure that this lady was absolutely insane, and that this wouldn’t work. But alas,we did it and had chalk that glowed under a black light.
The first thing you need to do is make glow water. You need UV reactive non toxic highlighters. I got mine at Walmart. They were your basic big ole highlighters. Take the back off of them and pull out the piece inside that is soaked with ink. Place a bowl in your sink, then over the bowl pour warm water over the ink. This will cause the ink to run out and into your bowl. I followed the original recipe and used about six cups. Maybe a tad more. The original author got other colors to work but I only had success with the regular yellow highlighters.

Glow water is pretty amazing all on its own. I was thinking a water balloon fight under a black light. Fun! But I wanted to make the actual glow chalk. So the next step is to get some sidewalk chalk and allow it to soak in the glow water. I let mine soak for three days. The chalk absorbs the glow water. The original post immediately uses their chalk after soaking it, but I allowed ours to sit for a day. The chalk is a little wet feeling, so I put my kids into their painting smocks to protect their clothes.

Now you just need a place to draw. You can absolutely draw outside, wait for it to get dark then shine a black light onto your drawings. We couldn’t wait for it to get dark though. We opted to head to our garage. Our initial drawings were done in the light, then I turned on the black light and the regular light off to surprise my kids. Then we just continued to draw under the black light. This was so cool, and I am super happy that it worked. My kids used up all of their chalk in that first day. To clean it up, we just sprayed with water like we would normally do. It came right upon problem.

For more information go to: Growing A Jeweled Rose

-Stephanie Wright