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!

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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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

So cool right?

Now if you liked this idea, here are

Eight other ways to Play with Light!

• Light Painting with a Flashlight
• Make an orange peel candle
• Make rainbows with CDs
• DIY Glow in the Dark Chalk
• Make different shaped Christmas Light bokeh
• Painting with Glow Sticks
• Sugar Skull Milk Jug Luminaries

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!