Glow in the Dark Dream Necklace (Inspired by The BFG)

I finished another book from my list: The BFG by Roald Dahl.
If you are not familiar with this book, its a children's story about a giant called the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) that collects dreams in glass jars and stores them on shelves in his cave.  Every night, he sneaks around London with a briefcase full of jars.  At each window, he stops to remove a dream, put it in his trumpet, and quietly blow it into the room of sleeping boys and girls.



I immediately envisioned myself making necklaces with tiny jars filled with 'dreams' that glowed in the dark.
A pack of Crayola Outdoor Glow in the Dark Sand caught my eye at Toys R Us, so scooped it up and ran home to fill my little glass jars with glowing dreams.  Doesn't that look exciting?  (image from toysrus.com) It was only after ripping apart the packaging that I checked out the product online and realized that the sand only glows for four hours.   Boooo.  Well, since I bought it, I need to find a use for it, sooo, guess I'll try to come up with than an outdoor drinking game.





I searched for rechargeable glowing sand, but had no luck.  Soooooo, I got desperate and dug out the only glowing art supply I have: lanyard string scraps.  I stared at it for a very long time.  "How can I use you?" I asked it, "What can we do here?"  Finally, I started cutting it into very, very tiny pieces.  As you can imagine, this took a long time.

The result was a lovely pile of finely minced glowing 'sand' that looked almost like yellow-green tinted sugar.  I suppose using lanyard scraps to make glowing sand counts as an up-cycled project.  Using a paper funnel and a toothpick, I managed to fill the jars I found on Etsy.  After adding some white glitter, I sealed them up and strung each one on a leather cord (cut from a belt I bought at Goodwill).

Look! It actually worked!  My camera doesn't take great pictures in the dark, but you get the idea.
I worried that since my glowing sand was encased in glass, it might not recharge.  But it definitely does, and it looks very nice.

I'm pretty proud of myself with this one.  I think challenging myself to use only what supplies and random junk I have on hand is a good exercise.  I actually read the book about a month ago and my search for glowing sand took longer than I thought it would.  If I had just thought of the lanyard scraps first, I could have finished this in an afternoon.  But, then again, I wouldn't have discovered the glowing sand drinking game either...