Cemetery Crosses

David_AVD

David_AVD

Grandpa Elf
Community project designer
Joined
Jun 12, 2010
Messages
4,717
Location
Victoria Point (Brisbane)
I've been playing around with UV lights with the intention to illuminate some Halloween props. One prop I started last week was a set of cemetery crosses.

Since I was having trouble finding a white paint that glowed well under UV, I tried painting a couple of them with fluorescent paint. It was from Kmart and comes as a 4 pack for $5.

This is a night shot of my first test:

cemetery_crosses2.jpg
 
If you want white to show up better, get some "RIT" white dye (you can find it with the other fabric dyes in the grocery store). mix with water and paint on the crosses (or dip fabric in it). when dry it leaves a chemical that glows under UV light.
 
https://store.ritstudio.com/laundry-and-dyeing-aids/liquid-dye-8-oz-whitener-and-brightener/

Another source of interest might be this product:
e11be0a4-80fb-478e-8684-9351d1dc09ec.png._CB330462798_.png

I found quite by accident that the blue and pink glow under UV (yellow not so much). Target and Walmart puts this stuff on sale near the end of summer. Last year I scored 5 packs for a $1.99 (or something close) for each. I laser cut pumpkins and bats out of sponges and let the girls dip them in the chalk paint and stamp their little tails off. All over the walkway and even on the siding on the house. It washes off so no crisis. Dip hands in it. Walk bare foot in it. Its all fun with the kids and gives them something to do while I am hanging pixels ;)

Also, I tested the small vials from this site for plastic dying but it didn't work the way I wanted:
http://darklightfx.com/products-uv-dye-4oz-blacklight.html

However, I suspect if you were to use their Electric Blue with the rit whitener with some water based white paint, you would end up with a UV white.

Here is how the dye looked under UV:
 
I accidentally discovered that glow-in-the-dark things light up nicely with UV light shining on them. Maybe glow-in-the-dark paint would be worth a try too.
 
I actually tried that last year with a glow in the dark skeleton and it's didn't really shine much at all.

When the UV source was brought close to the skeleton it would "charge it up" like sunlight, but it didn't react instantly (glow brightly) like I'd hoped. It must depend on the composition of the material.

I painted another 2 crosses today, one pink and one green. Under the UV light tonight the yellow and green ones look almost identical (green).

The next test will be some fluoro spray paint from Super Cheap Auto.
 
Roscoe vivid fx paint is the commercial product that all the pros use. It's very highly uv reactive and better yet comes in bright white. Try googling it or try calling your local commercial sound and lighting companies as most will have an account to purchase rosco products.


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I went thru a similar R&D process 2 years ago. I documented it on diychristmas.org. There's two threads search "my glow room" and "better outdoor blacklight".
I never succeeded in finding a good UV white except for the wildfire optic white. Very expensive but it's the only thing I cole fine thwt wqw actually white under a black light and not blue or purple or green. It's a clear difference from any of the rit dye or rit whitener or anything else for that matter.
I'd love to find something that works in white that didn't cost $70 a quart but haven't found it yet.


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