So I saw the Tom Scott video about the Pinkest Pink, which led me to Culture Hustle, which led me to Lit Paint. Oh boy, am I easily excited by shinies — or indeed, glowies. I had my eyes on it for ages, but £10 for a small pot of glow powder just seemed way too extravagant.

But, with the news that I'd actually get a bonus in December, I was all "Yay! Lit Paint! Lit Paint!" And, actually, it's a good thing I had to wait, because there is now a PINK LIT! So I get to see the Pinkest Pink + the Glowiest Glow! And now I'm writing about it in the Bloggiest Blog?!

So I have to say, the pinkest pink was actually not as exciting as Tom Scott made it out to be. It's just a fluorescent pink, and in fact, the day after I made some glow shapes, I had a customer at work with a jacket even more shockingly pink than my pinky pink star (well, it was more a coral-pink, but it was still way more retina-burning). The pinkest pink is still way more shocking than my pink hair, anyway. So there's that.

*sheds a tear for that paintbrush, which has since gone missing* I found it!

I tried to adjust the image to make it match more what I see. When you mix the powder with water, it is actually very pink. After adding the superbase, it's less so, and even less so when dry. I mean, I did get the Lit version, so maybe the raw Pink is actually more vibrant? In any case, it was a good advert, so well done Mr Semple and Mr Scott for the clever marketing!

In any case, it's not so much the pinkiness that interested me, but the glow! The glow is actually pretty cool, but again, slightly disappointing compared to what I hoped. But it seems that the further you go towards the red end of the spectrum, the less impressive glow-in-the-dark pigments are in general.

Now the original Lit, that's the one I had the highest hopes for. And this time, I was not disappointed at all!

Now to illustrate this, here is my bag I recently customised with some Tulip Glow fabric paint:

Just before taking the photo, I charged them up for several seconds with my bedroom lamp.

Here's a more close-up photo, using the same settings:

And here is the Lit paint, with the same settings, taken from about the same distance as the first Tulip photo:

The difference is really clear! Just to let you know, other than resizing and adding a watermark, I did no other adjustments to any of these photos.

The previous images had a 1 second exposure, but here is a comparison with a 1/3s exposure, and I did charge up the Tulip paints again before taking these photos:

It really is like having a small lamp on! Even in dim light, fully-charged, it's bright enough to cast defined shadows. It's really cool! It's so bright, that it glows brighter than the ambient light.

Here is Lit vs glow-in-the-dark shapes. Now in defence of these shapes, they are very old. But in fairness, I don't remember them ever glowing for more than about 10 minutes, anyway. These pictures are with my bedroom lamp on, and the shapes charged with a UV torch. To give the old glow shapes a chance, I charged them up last, just before taking the photo:

You can see a faint glow from the plastic shapes, but it lasted but a matter of seconds, and it's nothing compared to both the Lits.

Here they are again in the dark. As before, I gave them the light treatment last, but again, their glow lasted mere seconds, whereas the Lits were still going strong minutes later. I also gave the plastic shapes several seconds of charge time, but only a second each for the Lits. The second photo was taken immediately after switching off the torch; the third after 10 seconds. I used the exact same aperture, exposure and ISO on all three images, and again, no editing besides resizing:

And here is an image of some other shapes I made, after a single super quick wave of the UV torch over them. So literally, less than a second of charge time:

Here are the test stars from earlier, 8 minutes after the UV charge, you can see the green Lit is still luminescent, even with the light on:

And here is Lit under a ceiling light again, after less than a second of charge from the UV light:

Now, the glow does literally last all night! The initial superbright glow will fade within 10 minutes or so, but the afterglow lasts until morning, at least with the green Lit. The pink lit fades by morning. You can see I have the load of shapes on the floor, and I actually kept them covered up with an old leaflet for a full day, plus the rest of the next day until I got home. When I uncovered them, there was still a faint afterglow on the green ones! How cool is that?! (Update: I've put shapes in a box for 4 days, after being exposed only to ambient light, and after removing them from the box in the dark at night, there was still a glow. After 4 days!)

My verdict: it's so cool! I've already used up half of each tub! I am now hoping it's not too long before I get another bonus, so I can buy the 300g bag, plus the Blue Lit! The only downside is that it's quite tricky to mix up. It did take me a while to get the hang of it (measuring spoons are a must!), and in doing so, quite a bit of it went to waste. You do also need a binder to mix it into. The creator recommends Superbase, which I did use. You do need to get the ratios right, or it will go grainy very quickly, and it does make your paintbrush go funny (don't worry, it washes out easily). I kept ending up with a texture like buttercream, very grainy buttercream. The trick is to use enough water, but the downside is that the paint does get very thin and runny, and you will need to do multiple coats. And I definitely recommend using a clear coat of something over the top, even just PVA, or the stuff will end up shedding onto everything.

I did try it with yellow acrylic paint, and it didn't go grainy like it did with Superbase, but it also muted the glow to an extent (it does still glow quite well, but looks rather poor when held next to the Superbase version. You can see it in the rectangular piece of card in the montage photo above, the darker strip at the top of it is where I used yellow acrylic as the binder). Forget mixing it in with PVA. When I did this, it went grainy within seconds.

Anyway, I hope you found out something interesting today! The Action Lab has done some really cool experiments with Lit if you want to see more of it in action.

My next experiment is to try mixing Lit in with Tulip Glitter Bond, and seeing if I can get it to stick to my bag! I'll keep you posted n_n

PS I bought another dollshouse.