I’m a sucker for glowing things. Lights in the dark have always made me happy: from nightlights, tiny lanterns in pools or gardens, star-fields seen in planetariums and unspoiled wilderness, and my first glimpse of a big city at night – all the way to phosphorescent oceans, modern LED lights, photoluminescent plastics and glass, and fiber-optic luminous fabrics. There’s something magical, thrilling, and yet somehow comforting in glow phenomena.
I’m sure it has something to do with our 100,000+ year relationship with domesticated fire. Once, the glow in the darkness might have been swamp gas, a predator’s eyes, distant storms, lava flows, or wildfires. When we figured out how to keep embers going and feed them into flames, light-in-darkness changed our universe. Fire cooked our food and opened up new calories we couldn’t access before. It also extended our working, socializing, and creative hours.
My first encounter with a luminescent object would have been when I was four or five. It was a plastic lamp-pull on a chain, shaped like a long flower bud. It glowed blue-violet after exposure to light. I recall loving it more than all my stuffed animal toys, but not more than my dog, who one day ate it. (No harm to the dog, but the glowing flower never recovered its former allure.)
One of my most fun accidental glow discoveries was at a summer book arts convention at a college near Boston some years ago. I’d stayed in an off season dorm room for the week of the conference, working on transcribing lecture notes until late in the night, and collapsing asleep without paying much attention to anything but blessed darkness. On my very last night, I’d let my eyes adjust to the gloom long before I fell asleep. The humble, tiny dorm revealed a secret: a ceiling glimmering with glowing pale green and blue stick-on vinyl stars, carefully applied by some previous occupant. The wonder of it still makes me grin.
I’ve been lucky to experiment with some amazing glow products from these companies, who sell pre-mixed glow paints and mediums, as well as the base powder formulas for custom use: Glow Inc. and Glotech, Int. ‘Glow Crescent’ below was made with Glow Inc. blue and green powders mixed in an acrylic resin, then layered over sculpted polymer clay forms.
A number of bead-supply companies sell glow-in-the-dark plastic or glass beads. 
I’m a snob, in that I want glass beads with the glow powder mixed into the hot glass while being formed, not applied as a paint to the interior of the hole. (It’s worth more, for durability and glow duration.) Fire Mountain Gems carries some interesting glow glass beads. The green beads below have paint in the holes, and lose glow rapidly. The blue ovals at right contain glow powder in the glass, and last for hours.
A decade ago, I made an edition of three glow-in-the-dark fabric books (Star Map 1 – 3). The pages were map-folded white linen with green glow paint and glow thread arranged as maps of fantasy constellations, along with the simple black embroidered text: Per Aspera Ad Astra. Sadly, I don’t have a good picture of them glowing, but here’s a daylight shot. 
I recently finished a glowing shirt. It began with some seriously industrial-strength glow powder, fabric paint medium, and an inoffensive linen tunic I found in a secondhand shop (sometime around when Pirates of the Caribbean was going into the second movie).
I had vague ambitions of wearing the finished tunic to the premiere, so of course that never happened. Same with Tron: Legacy. So I decided just to finish the damned thing. It still looks mild and inoffensively tan under bright light, with subtly darker patterns where I drizzled the glow paint. In dim light like clubs and parties, it will dazzle. I think I’m about ready to tackle a second, more elaborate version of the ‘Star Map’ books, or a glowing beaded wall tapestry.
Added info 11-16-2014: a friend of mine sent me a link to this amazing glow bike path. It’s amazing and dreamlike – and I hope I get a chance to see it in person someday.