Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Make your wheels glow in the dark! (And create some lovely modern art too!)

Do you like playing with glow sticks?  I love fall, but gosh, it gets dark outside so quickly!  I hate being cooped up inside.  What's a mom to do at night?  Well, we've tried embracing the dark by making a DIY Glowing Jellyfish Costume and drawing glowing designs on our skin.  Recently we also brought out our glow sticks and wove them into the wheels of Chuck's bike.  (I was inspired by Meri Cherry's awesome glow in the dark Dancing Ballerina Tutus!)

The activity was a hit!

Make Glow in the Dark Wheels!


Make your bike's wheels glow- fun art activity for kids!
This post contains affiliate links.  Thank you for your support!

Yup.  This was a super easy activity that didn't cost very much to do and required very little set up  Plus, it got us outside and we made some beautiful glowing art.

Yup, you could say that the activity gets "glowing reviews" from our whole family?  Get it? Hee hee hee.

Ok.  Here's what we did!



2 Ways to Make Your Wheels Glow in the Dark!

Materials Needed:

  • Glow Sticks  (I just got a small pack at Michaels, but they have very large packs online if you want to buy a whole stash.)


Method 1:  Weave your glow sticks through bicycle spokes


This was the first idea that I thought of and it was fairly easy to do.

Place glow sticks in your bike's spokes


Then, Chuck got outside and rode his bicycle around.  The glow sticks created beautiful designs like this...

Fun glow stick and bike play with kids!

And if you take a photo of the spinning wheels with long exposure, you get a lovely spacey image like this!

Easy glow stick play with kids- fun outdoor art activity!


Method 2:  Wrap your glow sticks around your tires

Ok.  Chuck came up with this idea.  I was just satisfied seeing the first method work out, but he had other plans.  We flipped his bike over and then wrapped our glow sticks around the wheels.  Then, we used the pedal to spin the wheel around.

Place glow sticks around bike wheels and see what happens!

If you spin the wheel at varied speeds, you'll actually see different bands of colors created by the glow sticks!

place glow sticks around bike wheels and vary the speed you spin the wheel to reveal beautiful glowing art

And if you spin the wheels at constant speed, you'll see this lovely 3D looking disk.

glowing art created by consistently spinning tires that have glow sticks on them


And then if you spin the wheel at varied speeds and take a photo with long exposure, you see cool spacey images like this...

long exposure shot of glow sticks on bike wheel as it spins with varied speed

So cool right?

Now if you liked this idea, here are

Eight other ways to Play with Light!




Let's keep in Contact!

Like this idea?  You can always find other fun ideas on my Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts!


Keep creating, friends!