Way back in 2021, in the midst of COVID restrictions and eternal boredom...

...a very bored Joogle came across the forum post that really and truly first introduced him to the world of body mods. The xGlo looked SO COOL! But this glass-encapsulated, radioactive subdermal tritium implant had already been discontinued. Turns out, without the right kind of radiation shielding, tritium is just a little too dangerous to live inside the human body. Ah well. Eventually, I worked up the courage to implant some NFC/LED blinkies, but that very first biohacking forum post created an itch I just couldn't scratch, despite having implanted everything from NFC chips, LED lights, and Magnets in my skin.

Until now. And now there's no need to cause a Chernobyl-style disaster inside my own body.

My very first attempt at glow-ifying my skin happened in March of 2025 and involved mixing glow-in-the-dark powder with UV cured resin atop a flat titanium dermal anchor. Don't get me wrong--this absolutely worked. But dermal anchors don't last forever. In fact, months later I accidentally ripped this one out of my skin entirely when it got snagged on the underside of my K2 Plus' build plate.

Now we can make ourselves photoluminescent a bit more permanently.

Glow Powder Cuttings and Scarification to the Rescue

Our very own Merlin is truly a wizard (and honestly a super cool person if you ever get a chance to talk to them).

Merlin has a VERY detailed and picture-filled tutorial on their own blog at bioduck.me demonstrating how to do your very own DIY glow powder cuttings. The process includes scarification with a scalpel, dusting the wound with biosafe encapsulated strontium aluminate glow powder, and how to handle aftercare. I won't reiterate the whole process here, but it's exactly what I followed to create my very first glow powder cutting.

My First Attempt

Here's my first attempt two months healed. I followed Merlin's instructions pretty precisely and got some good results. For improvements, I think my scalpel cuts were a bit too shallow and my line widths were too narrow. If you go the scalpel route, deeper and wider cuts are going to give better results. I've heard reports on Biohackers Digital that skin removal may not give the best results, here, but I've not tried that myself.

A couple of tips using Merlin's method (disclaimer--below links are Amazon Affiliate links, but they're 100% products I've used successfully):

1. Use a tattoo pen to draw your design on your skin OR

2. Use Tattoo Transfer Paper to draw your design and apply it to the location on your body where you intend to carve. You'll need a thin layer of tattoo stencil cream/gel on your skin for the ink to transfer correctly.

3. I've also successfully used tattoo numbing cream (apply hourly for 3 hours beforehand) for pain management but if you have access to lido and know how to safely utilize it, that'll be faster and more effective.

Testing Other Methods

I've also tested various other methods such as:

1. Creating a tattoo 'ink' of sorts by mixing hyaluronic acid gel with our glow powder (I did sterilize the HA powder (1.5 grams) before mixing with distilled water (80mL))

2. Injecting the mixture with an 18g syringe under a line (top right line in the below image) - this did not work very well and was fairly painful. Don't recommend.

3. Using a tattoo gun with a dry shader needle to abrasively but more precisely cut the skin before applying the glow powder (bottom right line in the below image) - this worked spectacularly well

4. Using a dermal punch/mole punch to create circular holes - this also worked spectacularly well and you can see this in the header image to this blog post. Please note, with skin removal, you'll have an increased risk of infection and you'll need to take extra care to keep the area sterile and clean and away from water for at least two weeks. It will take a good while longer for the scar to form over the hole, particularly if cutting a circle with a greater diameter.

5. Using the HA gel/Powder mixture as a true tattoo ink while cutting the lines (all the other lines in the image below) - this would have likely worked better had I been slower and cut deeper with the tattoo gun. I plan to touch up these lines with the same method soon to see if I have more success that way.

Concluding Thoughts...

This is all a giant experiment, but so very many people have had amazing success making glowing tattoos using some form of scarification. As more people play around and experiment with the glow powder, I'm certain we'll find some new, unique, and potentially more effective ways to make ourselves a bit 'brighter'. If you want to check out the progress others have made, you can always check out Biohackers Digital on Discord and head over to #glowing-things

Until next time!