A glitter refill based on Calcium Chloride to create a high specific gravity solution to support glitter. The colour is inkjet refill ink with a few drops of magenta and about ten drops of yellow to give a bright tungsten-friendly orange colour.
There are various grades of calcium chloride, and the best choice is food-grade as it is very pure, but the stuff I got was "hexahydrate" (six molecules of water?) and very slushy. I guess if you could get pure CaCl2 in "dihydrate" form (which is very dry and white) it would require much less weight of the calcium chloride to water. As it is, it required only about 300ml of water to 1kg of the slushy calcium chloride.
The choice of glitter is important too. It should be coated glitter which has the layer of clear plastic, a metallisation layer and a protective coating that prevents the metal from tarnishing or corroding in the strong solution. Fortunately most common glitters on ebay seem to be coated. Some coloured glitters lose their coloured coating into the water, so I tend to recommend using plain silver glitter.
There are various grades of calcium chloride, and the best choice is food-grade as it is very pure, but the stuff I got was "hexahydrate" (six molecules of water?) and very slushy. I guess if you could get pure CaCl2 in "dihydrate" form (which is very dry and white) it would require much less weight of the calcium chloride to water. As it is, it required only about 300ml of water to 1kg of the slushy calcium chloride.
The choice of glitter is important too. It should be coated glitter which has the layer of clear plastic, a metallisation layer and a protective coating that prevents the metal from tarnishing or corroding in the strong solution. Fortunately most common glitters on ebay seem to be coated. Some coloured glitters lose their coloured coating into the water, so I tend to recommend using plain silver glitter.
I need to top off my glitter lamp how can I do that?
Hi, I recently have a leaking glitter lamp and it felt oily, so I was wondering if you’d do an experiment using silicone oil with glitter?
Thanks! I've been struggling to replace the fluid in my glitter lamp. I have a supersaturated solution of Morton's Canning Salt in distilled water but I am yet to find a suitable glitter. Even chopped up Christmas Tinsel just sinks. Can you name the glitter you're using that I can get on Amazon or Walmart? Do I need a heat absorber at the bottom to encourage convection?
Hi Clive. Really enjoy the videos, especially this sort of thing. I have an old mathmos atmos lamp and the bottle has gone cloudy so I'm thinking of dumping it, buying a new bottle and converting the old bottle into a glitter lamp so I can switch between the two. How would I go about making a safe bottle mix that would work with a 40w or 25w bulb? Thanks in advance. Keep on rocking
Hi Clive I have a Vintage Square glitter Lamp. The glitter has stopped moving at all. I bought food grade Glycerin Vegetable and I have distilled water what else do I need and in what proportions (Ie 3 to 1). My Lamp in 750 ml (25.4 Fl oz) Please help and Thank you!
Did you use liquid calcium chloride or did you use the powder?
I have a vintage purple glitter wizard lamp. Almost all the liquid is gone. How can I get more?
This is a cool video it's nice to know you can make replacement liquid! I really wish I could find a video that shows the actual process of making a glitter lava lamp though! I want to make a sparkley blue glitter lamp with fast moving glitter but I can't find any info that actually shows how to make these things. I'm a visual learner so explanations are lost on me. LOL
Have you ever encountered the majority of the glitter agglomerating at the top and the bottom? I've added a surfactant, and convection flow is apparent, however, the glitter collecting at the top and the bottom seems wasted.
you are not a genius
Calcium Chloride = DriZair. Used for removing moisture in rooms or spaces. 99 cents at any hardware store. And I used food coloring.
How much of the glitter lamp solution do you get when you mix the 300ml of water and 1kg of calcium chloride? I have a lava lamp that recently stopped flowing properly (the wax kept getting stuck on the sides), and I'd love to make my own glittler lamp in the same way you did, and I gotta know if 1kg of calcium chloride will be enough to fill the lamp. I already emptied out 99% of the bottle, with some residual wax on the bottom of the bottle left that I'll need to get out.
Hey Clive! Awesome work on the glitter breakdowns and lamps. I recently strained old glitter out of a Lava Grande and replaced it with flakes that are a bit larger than the original mix. When I run this lamp it gets going really nice for a little while and then I notice that most of the glitter ends up resting on the bottom of the globe and is very lazy to hit the heat stream back up. I believe it may be an indication that it is getting too hot but thought I might check with you to see if you had any ideas? Thank you in advance!