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More ideas for parties - glow parties

What is a glow party?

Glow party, relies on the atmosphere created by clothes and paints that glow in UV-light. This concept has been very popular elsewhere in the world and it has stranded on Finland in past years. Glowparties are usually organized at clubs and restaurants, but nothing prevents them to be organized at home or at other private events.

As with other parties, good preparation guarantees a succesful night. We offer you a complete checklist in this article, and by following it, you are close to a succesfull glow party night.

 

The best glow party - with what?

When organizing a glow party, you should remember the holy trinity of organizing a party: food and beverages, music and company. To make it glow you might have to put in some extra effort, but hard work always pays off with a prime atmosphere.

What do I need for organizing a glow party?

Dark room
You shouldn't start competing with the sun (although our sales manager would probably get excited about this). Finnish fall nights usually do the darkening by themselves, but windows should still be covered with blinds, curtains, black cardboard or affordably with a black garbage bag. Materials used to block the light are also excellent surfaces for painting patterns with paints that glow in UV-light. You can also find some strawberry-plastic from a hardware stores for decorating a bigger room. This material is more durable than garbage bags, but it's on a roll and easier to spread. If you are going to end up with left over strawberry-plastic, you can usually return it to the store. 

Ultraviolet (UV) - aka black light
Even though you can have a glow party without UV-light, relying on glow in dark products and LED-lights only, you will get way more out of your party by using UV-lights and UV-active decorations and paints. UV-lights are not that expensive anymore. For example this UV-light tube is enough to light a small room. We also have some E14- and E27-based black light bulbs, which will transform your regular lamps in to UV-lamps that will rise up the atmosphere.

Glowsticks
Glowsticks are the second foundation of a glow party. A chemical reaction inside the glowstick will make them glow in dark for hours. Regular glowsticks can be used to create an impressive necklace and thinner glowsticks can be used to create anything from bracelets to eye glasses, when used with connectors.

Paints and decorations
Decorating the party room doesn't have to be expensive. Almost all cardboards with fluorescence and neon color markers will glow nicely in UV-light. You can create several different kind of decorations out of these. Extra touch can be added by using UV-active paints. If the party room isn't in use 24/7, you should cover all the painted surfaces with garbage bags or black cardboard, which is easy to remove and throw away after the glow party. Room can also be decorated with LED air balloons and LED candles can be placed on tables. Party can be taken to the next level with a smoke machine and a confett cannon. These are also very affordable nowadays for average people too.

Accessories
It is good to have some special accessories for the party people. From our selection you can find eye glasses, bunny ears and ear rings that glow in dark. By using your Facebook event page created for the party, you can make sure that there is enough accessories for people and that costs can be devided evenly.

UV-active skinpaints and -makeup 
Do you have a talented makeup artist or someone artistic in your group of friends? Yes or no, skinpaints and makeup can be used to create funny stuff in a dark room equipped with an UV-light. The gloweffect will make sure that even the weakest makeup can look very impressive. You can also test the makeup with an UV-keychain.

Preparations

Darkening the room
When you have all the equipment you need, it is time to move on to the next stage. The most important thing is to darken up the room. You can use garbage bags, blinds, curtains or black cardboard to cover windows and other light sources. For more glow you can attach these things with a fluorescencing tape. Tape can also be used for other creative decorations.

Creating a playlist
One part of the holy trinity for a succesfull house party is to have good music, so you should put some time on planning the playlist. It is also good to remember that there is always several people who want to be the DJ, so the playlist should be flexible. There are several options how to create the playlist. One option is to make a public Spotify-playlist where guests can add their favorite songs in advance. Other option is to create several lists for different genres, where you can easily find music with one click that fits the purpose. The most important thing is that there is enough songs for the whole night. 

Food

It is good to have enough sweet and salty snacks at a glow party too. Easyness is a good guideline. Food has to be easy to eat and something that can be prepared and served before the party starts. This leaves more time for the organizer - who is you - to focus on the essential which is having fun.

Good examples are different kind of salads (ingredients can be put in different bowls, so everyone can make a slad of their choise), stuffed baguettes and sandwiches, also sushi and fresh spring rolls. Among these, all pies served as cold are a good option too. For more filling options is good to have some chips, cornflakes and popcorn. Besides basic sour cream dip, you can try hummus which is prepared of chickpeas.

Reminder To share the amount of work, you can also have a potluck, where everyone brings something and all food is shared with the group.  

 

Instructions for punch

Beverages should be on point too when having a party. With a goup of friends BYOB (bring your own bottle) is less expensive, but usually it is good to have some other beverages to be shared with the whole group. Below are few traditional punch recipes, but punch should always be created to fit your and guests' taste. Drivers and people who don't want to drink alcohol should also be taken into account by serving a non alcohol punch. You might also want to consider about serving some coffee to keep the party up.

To get some glow for your drinks, you can use some of our drink products.

Traditional punch

Castle punch (familiar from TV, which is the President's castle Independence day's original punch recipe)
  • 1 ½ bottle Jugoslovanski Rizling, or some other white wine made out of Laski Rizling-grapes
  • ½ bottle Bordeaux Bianc,
  • 2 dl White Port
  • 1 bottle of Pöytäviina
  • 2 drops of lemon peel extract
  • 1 bottle dry Elysée
  • 3 bottles of Grape-beverage
  • About 10 pcs LED-ice cubes

Original recipe: http://www.iltasanomat.fi/viihde/art-2000000845063.html

Non-alcohol punch

  • 0,3 l grapefruit juice
  • 0,1 I pineapple juice
  • 0,3 l apple juice
  • 1 l mineral water or Sprite
  • ice
  • Decoration: fresh pineapple pieces
  • Enjoyed out of a LED-drinking glass

Original recipe: http://www.naimisiin.info/haaopas/alkoholittomatboolit.html

Stiff punch

  • Koskenkorva-liquor
  • Raisins (can be left out if the taste is too fruity)
  • This is easiest to drink out of shot glasses that glow in dark (if even out of those)

Fun activities for parties

Usually good drink, company and music is enough for good glow parties. Still, it is good to prepare 1-2 activites to get the group together and rise up the atmosphere. We have couple suggestions down below, but in the end imagination is the only limit for creating different activities.

Face painting

Equipments:

  • UV-paint for face and skin per person

You can get into the proper party mode with UV-face and skinpaints. You don't need any special equipment to spread these paints, your or friend's fingers are enough. The best makeup artist of the group is easy to be put responsible for  the war paint. Optionally you can leave painting for everyone's own shoulders and at the end of the night you can vote for the best painting.

Drinking games

Even the traditional drinking games can be given a new style with glowing products. You can try a spin the glowing bottle or glowing beer pong, for example.

Spin the glowing bottle

Equipment:

  • 1 empty bottle (seethrough bottle is the best for spinning the glowing bottle)
  • 1 glowstick

Traditional spin the bottle might not be the most popular game in the beginning of the night, but when the bottle needed for the game has been emptied, this classic game can be lots of fun. Spin the bottle can get more glow when you put a thin glowstick inside the bottle. The rules of traditional spin the bottle are simple. Attendees sit in a form of circle and the bottle, equipped with a glowstick, is put in the middle of the circle. The person who starts the game is chosen by spinning the bottle. The person, who the bottle points at, is the one who starts. One who starts spins the bottle again. This time the person, who the bottle points at, is facing a legendary decision, where the question is: "truth or dare". If the player chooses truth, the person who spinned the bottle will ask them a question and it will have to be answered truthfully. If the player chooses dare, the person who spinned the bottle, has to come up with a task, which has to be done. If the player doesn't want to tell the truth or do the task, a punishment can be figured out. He/she might have to take off a piece of cloth or take a sip of a drink.

Glowing Beer Pong

Equipment:

  • 1.5 – 2 meters of empty table
  • 20 plastic cups (iconic, sturdier than regular disposable cups, Solo Red Cups are recommended)
  • 2 ping balls
  • Beer or something else to drink
  • Water to rinse off the balls

Glow version 1:

Glow version 2:

For most people beer pong is known from American movies and tv shows. The basic idea of the game is to get the ball inside opponent's cups. Each player has to empty the cup where the opponent has got their ping ball into. You can read more spesific instructions for beer pong over here.

When the basic rules and equipment is covered, we can see how to make it better entertainment for a glow party. In the end, making equipment more glowing is limited only by your imagination, but now we will introduce two different ways to make your ping ball and cups glow in dark.

In the first version we will decorate plastic cups with glowing bracelets, that are put around the mouth of the cup. For this version all you need is bracelet glowsticks and superglue. Execution is simple. Put some glue on the outside of the cup, a little bit below the mouth of the cup, and put the glowstick formed into a circle around the cup. Let it dry. Do this to all 20 cups and after that you can set up everything for beer pong and start playing.

On the second version we will rely on UV-active paint, that is used to color the outside of the cup, again a little below the mouth of the cup. This works best with white plastic cups. If you are using Red Cups, which are more suitable for this game, we recommend you to use the first version to add some glow.

If you want to add more glow to the ball, you can also paint it wit UV-active colors. Just remember to do this in advance, so the paint will have time to dry before starting the game.

 

Summary

With glow parties it is easy to get the atmosphere up, for parties at home or work. Glow parties work especially well at pre-Christmas parties, in the middle of the darkest time of the year. And organizing a glow party doesn't necessarely cost more than a regular party. Just keep in mind the basics: food and beverage, music and people. Remember to test the decoration and if the lightsources are correctly blocked in advance - and relax. You will be succesful with there instructions.