Paint Your Own Glow-in-the-Dark Sketch Wall
[Via – Lifehacker]
If you’ve got a spare wall somewhere in your home that you’re not sure how to decorate, grab a bucket of glow-in-the-dark paint and slap some on. Lower the lights, grab some UV-LED flashlights and start drawing.
PaulBo over at Fangletronics came up with the idea as a way to entertain his kids but we’re pretty sure this is cool enough to amuse just about anyone. As long as you have white or very light-colored walls, your paint job won’t be particularly noticeable so you might even able to get away with this little project if you’re renting your abode.
The painting process is pretty simple:
We isolated a good amount of wall with painters tape, we just wanted it to be slightly taller than the kids. Then we put on 2 coats of white primer, 3 coats of the glow-in-the-dark paint and a couple of layers of varnish (so the kids didn’t immediately scrape off the latex based glow paint). After removing the painters tape, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the wall didn’t look much different.
Once the phosphorescent paint dries, there’s a couple of different things you can do with the wall. PaulBo walks you through how to hack together some small UV-LED light pens cobbled together from some small LED keychain flashlights, coin cell batteries, and a soldering iron. If you don’t want to hassle building them, then the LED flashlights will work fine but the glow just won’t last as long.