What materials do you use for blacklight puppets?

As mentioned in my short post about what materials to use when making a puppet, there’s no hard and fast rules as to what to use when building a puppet. However, blacklight puppets are slightly different. Before continuing you may want to read the intro on blacklight, which discusses certain concepts in more detail, like how it works and what colours to use.

Blacklight puppets aren’t actually one type of puppet: you can make blacklight shadow puppets, blacklight muppet-types, blacklight… well, anything and everything! What makes it blacklight is the use of fluorescent materials.

So what kind of materials can you use? Technically speaking, anything that is neon-coloured will work, and this extends to fabrics, paints and other materials. But you should always test first, since some colours and materials will work better than others. In fact, blacklight materials really can be limitless, so testing and experimenting is a must.

First, we need a blacklight. You can purchase a small handheld one cheaply; for Aussies, you can find them in the Sparties section at Spotlight for about $7 each (well, back in 2008 when I wrote this you could. Since then I have not seen a single blacklight for sale there). For everyone else, visit your local stamp or banknote collecting society, where you can purchase one (they’re often used for checking for fraudulent stamps/notes).

Next, take your blacklight and check out what glows! I did a little test at my workbench, where I had some materials set aside for testing (more text under video player). (David Hellyer from Hellyer’s Puppet Workshop also has an excellent video on blacklight)

Paper, etc.

I found that white Foamies (brand name for ‘fun foam’ or ‘craft foam’; Aussies can find it at Riot Art, Americans at Joann’s) worked really well, as well as white paper. There are other coloured foams, but I didn’t have any at the time.

Black cardboard of course, doesn’t show up under blacklight, so you can make some great 2D puppets, shadow puppets, or recycle and paint cereal boxes to create some funky glowing objects.

Paints

Despite what you might think, not all white paint glows well under blacklight, so you might want to test a few products before buying: additionally, there are blacklight paints you can buy from blacklight suppliers (Rosco for instance sells blacklight paints around the world). I had fluoro pink (which actually appears orange under blacklight), fluoro green, and fluoro yellow paints - the yellow doesn’t work! So it’s especially important to test before you buy, because you never know what will work and what won’t. Paints can be used on everything, even foam puppets. I tried using paints with my ‘blacklight butterfly’ shadow puppet, an orange neon paint and white cardboard. You can see it in ‘normal’ lighting conditions and blacklight in the video below (more text below video).

Fabrics

A great example of this is my Round Head Foam Puppet pattern: the fur I used was blue, and surprisingly, while testing what appeared under blacklight, I discovered that the fur did have a glow (see first video above. Not a particularly strong one, but it did glow. (Additionally, I discovered that some of the heads on my pins glow!)

There are a number of suppliers who sell blacklight furs, fleece, and other fabrics, which can be used to cover foam puppets.

Costuming and rods

In order to hide the performers, and any methods of operation on the puppets, you must black them out. This means: coating any rods, etc. in a black matte paint or similar coating method. Matte is important, because you don’t want the paint to reflect under light - even if it is blacklight. Performers should wear a blue black (black cloth comes in hues, believe it or not! One’s blue, the other is red), from head to toe; velveteen is a good cheap light fabric for this. There are a number of blacklight suppliers that sell rods and gloves.

Other stuff

What else works? Polystyrene balls came out well when I tested them, costume wigs might work if they’re fluorescent… Don’t forget, you can use black paint or materials to highlight, accent, hide, or outline puppet features. In fact, my best suggestion is to visit your local craft and art store, and pick up materials you might want to use, test it with your handheld blacklight, and use what you can. As mentioned, anything and everything can be used so long as they’re fluorescent, and it’s hard to narrow it down for you here. However, the above is a good start; but if you have a suggestion, let me know and I’ll add it here! For further reading, I highly recommend Wolfstone’s list of materials that react to blacklight.

Learn how to make one of these puppets here [link to be added]. Read the book review of Let there be blacklight.

This post AKA what are black light puppets made out of, AKA black light material