Glowing Halloween Art with Pumpkin Diffusing Paper

Kids will love this easy glowing Halloween art that glows under a black light. Use pumpkin shaped diffusing paper and neon oil pastels to make this awesome idea work. I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

Glowing Halloween Art

Supplies Needed for the Halloween STEAM Activity:

• diffusing paper, coffee filters, or paper towels
• neon oil pastels or neon crayons (according to Crayola only certain crayon colors will fluoresce under a black light)
• washable liquid watercolors or food coloring
• droppers or spoons
• tray or baking dish
• black light

How to Make the Glow Under a Black Light Halloween Art

Cut diffusing paper into pumpkin shapes. Diffusing paper is a similar material to coffee filters. You can easily use coffee filters or even paper towels if you don’t have diffusing paper.

Use the neon oil pastels to make the jack-o’-lantern face.  I like to draw the eyes, mouth, and stem with oil pastels.

Elon wanted to color the entire pumpkin with oil pastels. It’s totally fine to let them see what happens when they add the watercolors. (the watercolors will only stay where the oil pastels are not.

Experiment with different colors to see what will happen under the black light.

Then, drop washable liquid watercolor onto the pumpkins. (Explore color mixing by offering different colors.)

You can dilute the liquid watercolors. The more you dilute them, the less bright the colors will be.

The watercolors will absorb into the paper. Watch the color spread across the paper.

The oil pastels will remain bright. The watercolor will run off of the oil pastels. Crayons will do the same thing.

Allow your art to dry. You can soak up excess watercolor using a paper towel.

Check it out under a black light.

Some colors glow brighter than others.

More Halloween STEAM Activities

Check out our collection of Halloween science, STEM, and STEAM ideas here.