Lacy Look Dresser

It's not Mod Podge.

Modge Podge lace onto front then paint over. love the texture!

This dresser is a DIY project, just not the one described in the Pin.  Sadly, the domain for Home Idea Maker has expired at the time of this post, so I had to check Google's Cache, but happily it's there.  From the creator's own content:

You’ll also need paintable wallpaper to make the lace look on the drawers (this one is Allen and Roth from Lowes). 

And also:

Attach the wallpaper with a light adhesive spray and then you’ll need to paint it, with two coats if it absorbs the paint too much. 

There it is.  It's not lace, and it's not mod-podged on.  It's not that you couldn't try lace and mod-podge, but that's not how this look was achieved, and if you go that route, you need to prepare yourself for that.  Fabric is probably not going to have the depth that this wallpaper does.

Glowing Waterbeads

You keep using that word...

Glowing waterbeads - these things are so cool and easy to make!

Wow!  A Pin that combines two of my favorite things!  Water beads and claims of glowing when that's not what's happening.

My main beef with this one is the definition of "glowing."  These water beads do not glow in the dark (or anywhere else); they must be activated with a black light, at which point they will look like the picture above.  That doesn't qualify for "glowing."  

For those of you who did not memorize the Aurora  Borealis Drink post:

"This may be a good time to get into the way certain kinds of luminescence work.  Luminescence is what it's called when something gives off light.  The type of luminescence that Pinners seem to love the most is photoluminescence, which means that matter absorbs energy and then emits light either immediately or as a delayed process.  

When you have a delayed release, you have something that glows in the dark.  Glow in the dark paint and other items slowly let go of the radiation they have absorbed (I'm talking about light here, not nuclear fission), and that energy is seen as visible light.  When the energy is gone, the object stops glowing.  This type of luminescence is called "phosphorescence."

When the glow happens immediately, as soon as you apply the energy (and it disappears pretty much as soon as the energy source is shut off), you have fluorescence."  

Since these beads require a black light, their reaction is classified as "fluorescence" rather than "phosphorescence," and according to the rules (which I may have made up), only phosphorescence can legally be referred to as "glowing" or "glowing in the dark."

As for how to make these, they're the same water beads from the previous "Water Marbles" post, but instead of using just regular water, or even food coloring in water, these beads are soaked in water that has fluid from a highlighter in it.  

That's it - that's the secret.  You open a highlighter, you mix it with water, and you soak your hydrogel beads in it.  THEN you get a black light, because as you know from using highlighters, they don't glow in the dark.  But they do fluoresce.

Glow Stick Xylophone

Can you paint with all the colors of the glowstick?

So cool! Glow stick xylophone. Put the glow sticks in cups of water and an aura comes off in the dark, when you tap them. Gotta try this!

There's not a whole lot to say about this one.  I mean, if you click through the Pin (which goes to the old version of the blog, but the new version has this disclaimer as well), the author herself states, "THE AURA IS JUST A CAMERA EFFECT!!!!!!"  Yes, in all caps.  Yes, with six exclamation points.  You can feel how tired she is of fielding questions about why someone else's glowstick xylophone didn't work like this.

So it begs the question - when someone read this and pinned it originally, did they just have bad reading comprehension, or did they deliberately mislead everyone by pinning a supercool picture and a pretty ridiculous (but apparently in the realm of "just believable enough") explanation?  I'm aware that the internet is full of trolls, I just didn't expect them to frequent mommy blogs and find pictures like this upon which to wreak their havoc.  

Anyway, as the creator of this picture very correctly asserts, "THE AURA IS JUST A CAMERA EFFECT!!!!!!" so stop bothering her about why your glowstick xylophone didn't shoot up auras upon being played.  

Beautifully Burning Dandelion

This is what happens when Drogon tries to blow on a dandelion head.

Dandelion on fire. Bucket list for this summer... It burns all different colors! :)

This one is pretty straightforward.  You can burn a dandelion head.  However, they don't have any special chemical properties that cause them to burn with these colors.  This is a manipulated photo.  The original is below:

 via Imgur

So if it's still on your bucket list to burn a dandelion, you go do you, but just know that you won't get any amazing colors.  It doesn't mean you did it wrong or your dandelion is defective (though I think Defective Dandelions would be an excellent name for a band).  

(Edited 6/13/2015 because original dandelion pic was removed - found a new one)

Glow in the Dark Paint: Part 2 - Glowing Plant Pots

When something seems too good to be true, you know what they say...

Welcome to the long-awaited Part 2 in our series of Glow in the Dark Paint!  Like Part 1, this is going to be a lengthier entry.

Rustoleum's glow in the dark paint on flower pots

This is an extremely popular Pin.  It even made an appearance on Buzzfeed.  However, I'm wondering if the word hasn't already spread to some of the earliest adopters that this is false.  There are a couple of links to Pins that used to have this picture, and those Pins are missing now.  Methinks they were deleted when their owners discovered The Truth About Glow In The Dark Plant Pots (DUN DUN DUNNNNN!!!!).

The popularity of this Pin speaks volumes about the desire that we have to believe without thinking.  Someone puts a caption about glow-in-the-dark paint, and everyone repins it because they want so badly to believe they can create this beauty for themselves.

But looking at this picture, there are several hints that would indicate this is not glow-in-the-dark paint.  For one thing, it's not dark outside in this picture.  Anyone who has any experience with glow-in-the-dark materials knows that it usually has to be quite dark before the glow will show up. 

Another clue is that the grass surrounding the pots is lit by the glow.  Again, glow-in-the-dark items usually don't glow strongly enough to illuminate much area around them, and this picture shows a pretty bright spread around each pot.

If you go to Amazon and check the reviews on "Rust-Oleum Glow in the Dark Paint," you'll find some very disappointed people:  

"Sad to see a name I trust like Rust-Oleum on this. I have a light beige paint in my daughters room and we tried to paint just a few glow in the dark flowers. Even after 5 coats this did not glow at all."

"The Rust-Oleum brand is usually pretty good, so I didn't even think to look up reviews. Turns out, this product is TERRIBLE. I left the light in the room I painted on for an extended period of time and then turned off (during the night, so there was NO light anywhere) and there was NO glow whatsoever. "

"I bought this rust oleum glow in the dark spray paint to spray my plantpots so they would glow at night did everything i should and NOTHING the dont even faintly glow ..Would not reccomend waste of money"

As you can see from the last quote, the customer wanted the paint specifically for plant pots.  This is the kind of disappointment that inaccurate Pins inspire.  Thanks, Pinterest Trolls.

And this isn't the only version of "glow-in-the-dark plant pots" out there.

 I haven't done this yet, but it said Rust-Olem glow in dark paint. I got this pic from someone else so I can't even say they are actually this bright. 

So what is The Truth?  It's that these pots are not coated in glow-in-the-dark paint.  They are lit internally by electric lights.  In case you doubt that statement, Sweet and Simple Living tried this project and came to this same conclusion.  

Where can you get these planters, since painting your own won't yield the results you're looking for?  Some Pinners believe the pots in the upper picture are sold by Certified Lighting, but there does not seem to be anywhere to actually order these pots on their site.  The pots in the lower picture are from Rotolux, according to Dornob, but going to the site they linked to sends you to KuL Designs when you attempt to view the planters.  You can also find lighted planters at Konstmide and Home Infatuation.

I think that last one offers a product that is the closest to the original Pin.  

The mystery picture

Paper towel holder for garbage bags

The most interesting thing about this Pin is that it looks like an awesome idea, and no one seems to know where it came from.  Every time I find this Pin linked to somewhere new, it's always "Hey, this is a great idea!" with no link to where it originally came from or how to do it.  

You might be saying "But it's so simple!  They don't HAVE to explain how to do it."

Au contraire!  Have you tried?  Have you attempted to thread a roll of trash bags onto your paper towel holder?  

Those of you who have already given this a try are nodding your heads.  The center of a roll of trash bags is NOT like the center of a roll of paper towels.  Most paper towel holders are specifically designed with the cardboard tube in mind.

But hope is not lost!  Your intrepid blogger has located what appears to be the very same paper towel holder seen in The Mystery Pic!  Feast your eyes on this!  It's the Awavio Paper Towel Holder, and it's all yours for $12.99 (I am not affiliated with Awavio or Organize It in any way).  The key to using a paper towel holder to dispense trash bags is to find one with a small rod rather than a larger diameter bar.  Then you can thread that bar through the trash bags and take advantage of your wall-mounted brilliance.

Technicolor Lemons

When life hands you lemons....

Let oranges or lemons soak in food coloring… Freeze and you could put them in a super cute punch.

Lemons injected with food coloring for a pretty centerpiece.

These are but a couple of the many Pins floating around that seem to show lemons that have been dyed lovely rainbow colors.  It's a very popular idea.  There is an entire board dedicated to Rainbow Lemons, as a matter of fact.

How did they do it?  One Pinner suggests injecting the lemons with food coloring, but Mad Art Lab tried that and (spoiler alert) it didn't work.  In fact, they tried a number of ways to color their lemons, and it didn't work.  

Others tried as well:

Here's why it cannot be done.  Because that picture has been Photoshopped.  Here's the original, and it's not even lemons - those are oranges!

Ambersweet, a new cold hardy orange variety

So stop stabbing your lemons with syringes and drowning them in food coloring.  Enjoy their lemony goodness for what it is.