The project I created for this website was very simple, easy, and bright. It was a quick and easy project, yet it served it’s purpose as a decoration really well. Even though the project turned out really well, I decided to take this little idea of a simple glow jar centerpiece decoration and I turned it into something much more interesting. The new and improved centerpiece is also bigger, but could be made any size.

Heres the link to my video!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7MHesxv1gE

Step 1: Think of a Design

To start out, get all of the materials together, then decide what kind of design you would like on the jar. On the instructables website it showed this being done with a mason jar, blue painters tape, and an exacto knife. Tape the jar and then trace what design you would like on the tape. After you are satisfied with the outline of your design, you trace the outline with the exacto knife and peel the tape off of where you have cut.

Step 2: Put That Design on There!

Now you are ready to spray paint the jar. If you would rather not use spray paint, you can use a sharpie or other type of permanent marker and draw your design on the jar. This is especially good to do if you would want the design to be more subtle or slightly lighter or compared to the opaque spray paint. After you have either spray painted or drawn on your design, you can take all the blue painters tape off, let the paint or ink dry.

Step 3: Get You Glow Stick or Sticks!

Get your glow stick.To cut the glow stick without getting as much chemicals everywhere, it helps if you cut it down the middle or right on top where there is an air bubble. I think the easiest way is to cut the glow stick in half not quite all the way through, and then bend it so the gel of chemicals can exit the tube without exploding chemicals all over the place. Once you have the glow stick cut, you can start to pour the liquid in the jar. Once you pour the glowing liquid in the jar, you can either swirl it around on the sides or leave it at the bottom. Either way we found the glow is about the same, one just makes the design more vibrant, which is the glowing liquid on the sides. Then you have a nice centerpiece or decoration for your house, deck, party, and more.

Step 4: Your Final Product!

There you have it a nice centerpiece or decoration for your house, deck, party, and more. If you are interested I have also built a glow tower. The next few steps will show you how this can easily be done.

Step 5: What You Will Need!

To start out with our new and improved glowing decor, I decided it would be more interesting to have a slide like sculpture of tiny glow jars. I grabbed some help, and we made the vision come to life. We used straws, a hot glue gun, a stabbing object of any kind to create holes, tiny clear cups to represent the “jars”, and 16 large glow sticks. The great thing about this project is that you can customize it to how you want it to be or how much you want to spend. The most difficult part of the process is figuring out how you want to build what you see in your head.(sorry for most of this I forgot to take pictures sorry once again)

Step 6: Try to Keep It Clean!

To start we layed down some black paper to keep any glowsticks from spilling on the table, and it was a great way to glue the base down which in turn made the glow building more sturdy. We glued the base down with a dome lid just for added structure, but that step is optional and not totally needed to keep the tower from falling over, it will be okay on it’s own. After we made sure we had a sturdy base,we planned out where we wanted the tower to go. We decided we wanted the cups to spiral down to the base.

Step 7: Putting Holes in the Bottom!

To spiral the cups, we punctured a hole in the bottom of the cup all the way to the side. This way when the glow liquid rolled down from the next one it would flow easily and fall into the next cup without spilling. The very top cup was punctured right in the middle so a small straw can fit through the middle and drip into the next cup, this step is optional, but we decided it would add a little flare to our glowing sculpture. The very top one also had a dome lid underneath it so it appeared as if it was floating above the rest of the cups when it was in the dark. For the very top where the glow liquid goes in first, we hot glued the base of the the top cup to the hole in the dome lid’s hole. It fit perfectly and serves as a really nice stand. After that was dry, we glued the dome lid to the next cup that will start the spiral. We put that aside and started on the bottom.

Step 8: Its All About That Base!

For the base of the whole thing, we chose a similar structure to the very top. The base consists of a dome lid and an clear plastic cup. We did the same thing as last time and glued the bottom of the cup in the hole of the dome lid. We did this for the purpose of any splashing from the glow liquid dropping and to add a little more weight so it is that much more sturdy.

Step 9: Started From the Bottom!

Building up from the base we used one of our cups with the hole on the side. We used hot glue and stuck the middle of the base on the rim of the cup catching the glow liquid. Also make sure when you glue it the hole leads to the cup underneath it. When we glued the cups together we also discovered that the hot glue was enough to melt the cups together. This was very helpful in making the cups more sturdy and also kept it from falling apart. From there you will continue to hot glue the cups and stack them into any sculpture you like.

Step 10: Keeping It Sturdy!

After we had glued the cups in the spiral pattern and waited for it to dry all the way, we glued the straws to various cups so it would be nice and sturdy and did not fall apart if it had gotten bumped. The straws also helped the tower of cups to be able to go higher without tipping over. It helped when we cut them at an angle so it matched up with the cup and the ground. After the straws were glued down we decided to start cutting the glue sticks.

Step 11: Cut the Glow Sticks!

To cut the glow stick do the same thing as the last project. This time when you cut the glow sticks empty the liquid into a separate cup so you can dump it all in or dump a little at a time.