Blacklight New Year's Eve Countdown Party -

Turn off the lights and throw an out of this world blacklight party for your family on New Year’s Eve. Who can deny the feeling that you get when you see the cool glow that comes with blacklight. If you saw my last post on countdown bags for New Year’s Eve then you know where I am going with this party idea but I put a whole new twist on it in the dark.

Not only do younger kids like this idea but tweens and teens love it too. Below are a few tricks on party decorations and other ideas that I will share.

DECORATIONS

It is so crazy what you can do with two packages of cardstock and a little imagination. I found neon cardstock at Micheals for $6 a package plus bought a set of white favor bags. That is basically all I used to decorate with. Here is an important tip for you though, not all neon materials (paper, cloth, paint, etc) will glow under blacklight. I learned the hard way last play date that I hosted with blacklight. So how I tested things to see if they would glow, that didn’t say fluorescent on the label, was with a hand held blacklight flashlight. I brought this into all my craft store visits testing every item out to see if it would glow. However, I would proceed with caution as my little flashlight was black metal looking and could be mistaken for a weapon of sort. Imagine someone next to you grabbing a small black metal object out of their purse or pocket, eek!

CIRCLE GARLAND

The circle garland is by far the easiest thing to make and takes very little time. I start by using a 2 inch and 3 inch hole punch and just go to town punching out a ton of circles from my cardstock. Let me tell you that sitting next to your hubby clicking a hole punch during his favorite show will get you some pretty interesting looks. Then I just fire up the sewing machine and add clear thread to my spool. Start with your first circle and sew straight down the middle. Follow the next circle right after it and repeat. I don’t like to stick to a specific pattern of colors because that just gets too complicated. Instead, I simply grab a color and/ or size different from before and just keep sewing. It probably took me all of 30 minutes to sew all the circles.

CLOCK FANS

The clock fans were also made out of cardstock paper. For these, I cut 4 pieces of paper into 6 x 11 inches, then fold them accordion style. Next you hot glue the edges end to end making a circle. Then press the inside down together. Finally secure it with a two inch hole punched circle. I finished it off with numbers and clock hands for every hour made out of adhesive vinyl that I already had laying around. You could buy scrapbook sticker numbers too.

TABLE DECORATIONS

What dinner would be complete without glowing place settings. All the party plates, cups, silverware, and napkins were bought on amazon. The confetti made a cool effect scattered all over a black table cloth. I also hung glow sticks (the short thicker ones) around my chandelier. Another tip is that anything that says ‘glows in the dark’ will also light up under black light like glow sticks and glow in the dark paint.

SWEET TREATS

Who knew that they made blacklight neon edible sprinkles and powdered food coloring. I searched the internet for hours trying to find it and ended up on a website for a baking supplies store in California called Busy Bakers Supplies. Where there is a will there is a way, right!? So naturally, I went to work making iced sugar cookies, chocolate cake pops, and chocolate dipped marshmallows all sprinkled with my new found glowing sugary fun. I even ordered a black covered fondant cake from my favorite bakery that I had planned to decorate myself with the powdered food coloring mixed into icing. I had visions of making firework designs on the top and adding a sprinkles border around the bottom, then life happened. I ran out of time right before dinner arrived and tried to simply drip the icing over the edges. I had a Pinterest fail as my icing was too runny and it ended up all flowing over the sides. See things don’t always work out. It however still tasted good with a vanilla flavored cake and a strawberry filling.

COTTON CANDY

Some people think I am a kid at heart and I get too much fun out of throwing parties for my kids. Well the are probably right. I have always wanted a cotton candy machine so I pulled the trigger on the purchase or should I say clicked the button. The boys had received gift cards to amazon for Christmas from a much loved family member and I made an executive decision on just what to get. My mind was blown when I found out that I could use hard candy like Jolly Ranchers to make the cotton candy. What? I had also bought the flavored floss sugar too. The floss sugar actually made the cotton candy more fluffier if that is a thing. I liked the presentation of the end result better than with the hard candy even though apple and watermelon cotton candy was a true novelty. The finishing touch was to use LED cotton candy cones. Now those were awesome!

LIGHTING

It goes without saying that you will need some black lights to illuminate the space. Simply replace your standard fixtures with black light bulbs. You can also use these black light bars that I found on Amazon. They really make the whole room glow.

HOURLY GLOWING ACTIVITIES

Countdown activity bags were a huge hit last year with the boys, so I decided to continue it this year. See my last post for 50 activity ideas. We started at 6:00 pm with dinner. Then I made bags for each hour from 7:00 pm to 11:55 pm.